Knitting Anyone?

Yarn Bowl

I started knitting again in December 2014 after a hiatus of 30 years.  I was first taught how to knit by my French professor in college.  She was from Switzerland originally, moved to China in the teens of the 20th Century after marrying a Chinese diplomat, then in 1950 decamped to Taiwan with her husband after the R. O. C. (Republic of China) was defeated by the Chinese Communist Party.  In addition to French and knitting, she also first introduced me to the art of eating a soft-boiled egg on an egg cup for breakfast.   

Tree Warmer

According to Kirk, I knitted him a pullover 3 decades ago during the early years of our marriage and it was his favorite sweater.  I can no longer recall how I did it.  It, however, soon got misplaced at the Philosophy Department in Berkeley and was never found again.  Fast forward to December 14.  We were in downtown Bloomington looking for ideas for Christmas gifts.  We went into a local yarn shop called Yarns Unlimited--they are the ones who clothe the trees downtown with knitted wool in the winter. Inspired by all the colorful yarn we saw, then and there I (we) decided that I should try to knit another sweater for Kirk just like the one he lost.  That's how I picked up knitting again.
  

Hand Warmers that can type

Thanks to the wealth of knitting tutorials on-line, I managed to figure out how to knit again from scratch. Since then I've knitted several sweaters, multiple scarves, caps, etc.  I like to have my knitting around when I am in between occupations and wanting to keep my hands busy, when conversation in a group seems daunting, or while sitting around at my hairdresser's waiting for my hair to finish "processing"; hours go by more quickly when you're stuck in planes or the airport, if you have your knitting with you. 
   

Tree Hugger

What prompted me to write this post was my chance reading of an article in the New York Times this evening called The Health Benefits of Knitting.  I'm not sure whether all the health claims in the article are verifiable but I can testify that it is an endlessly challenging activity and that it builds patience and perseverance, and teaches you to accept a certain amount of imperfection in your work--mistakes are unavoidable.  I'm certain that if we were still in Gainesville, Kirk and I would be able to get a knitting group going, with our old gang of fearless amateur painters.  I miss them sorely.  A note to the wise, for people with carpal tunnel discomfort, knit in moderation.  

Alltag

der Alltag eben
teenager edition

It seems to me that my life, since I stopped getting a regular paycheck (which coincided with the start of the recent recession and our moving to Bloomington), has been a series of experiments--a continual attempt at refining the art of Everyday Life, of finding the most productive ways to spend the time of my life.  Of course, you're probably saying to yourself, only a "lucky" few, with time on their hands, have the luxury to ponder questions like this.  The majority of people, instead, are so caught up in their daily grind that it may appear to them that even to raise this as a central question is an expression of unconscious arrogance. Well, maybe.  Or maybe it is just that it would be better if more people were in a position to raise it.  In any case, I will attempt to describe what everyday life means to me.

To begin with, the concept of life is bound up with the passage of time.  To help better visualize it, we humans conveniently carve it up into units of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, and so on.  Our life is made up of repetitive daily routines, which we go through mostly on autopilot.  We spend a large chunk (about a third) of the 24-hour daily cycle in sleep, during which time we are mainly unconscious.  Another third we devote to making money in order to sustain our lifestyle in the society we live in.  The time we spend in this pursuit is usually not at our own command.  The last third we devote to various of life's maintenance tasks, such as shopping, cooking, eating, bathing, maintaining relationships, leisure activities, and so on.  Our daily routines are so well structured and deeply ingrained in us through habit that we can easily lose sight of the fact that it is our life that we are "spending", those hours and days, which never return.

The expression of "spending" time is curious, though I think rather apt.  (German, with its tendency for precision, has a different word for spending money, ausgeben, than for spending time, verbringen.)  We all have, as it were, a limited amount of the "stuff" deposited into our own metaphysical checking account on the day of our birth.  The amount in the bank has, alas, only one direction to go, down--and it is drawn down with each day's passing.  When the account is depleted, one ceases to be alive.  There is a website, called the Death Clock, which will project the date of your death given information you input, with a countdown clock displaying the number of seconds remaining--a friendly reminder, as the website says, that life is slipping away, second by second.  There is no more graphic a reminder of our impending death as being confronted by The Ticktock of the Death Clock. (The prediction provided is based on a very simple calculation and is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, so take it with a big pinch of salt.  All the same, we each have an accurate death clock, even if we don't know the date.)

As I am unemployed, my concern is with how to conduct myself during the approximate 8 hours of "work" time each day.  Again, German makes a distinction between "to work" (arbeiten) as at a job and "to occupy oneself with or to be engaged in something" (sich mit etwas beschäftigen).  What one occupies oneself with varies at different stages of one's life--prior to the first 2-3 decades, in acquiring the knowledge and skills necessary to navigate the life ahead, while in midlife, in establishing oneself in the societal structures one finds oneself in, or in bringing up the next generation as the case may be.  Then there comes a time when one begins to wonder whether there is anything else that one would like to do, apart from what one has been doing for the past 20-40 years, while there is still time.  For me, it is not about seeking novel experiences, which frequently populate people's so-called Bucket Lists, but about learning something new and acquiring new skills, not necessarily with the aim of returning to the work force, but instead expanding one's mind.  My choice about how to spend my time is to spend it in study.  There are always certain interests, which I'm pursuing, which engage my time and intellect and mildly challenge my dispositions and physical ability.  Thanks to Kirk, I've been able to pursue a studious life, relatively worry-free, these past four years.  This is not to say that things won't change in the future.  But until then I'll try to make the best of the time I have, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.

„Arbeiten, um zu leben, und lebe nicht für die Arbeit.”

Slow Movement

At the beginning of this century (it's kind of special that our lives straddle two centuries), there arose a movement towards "consciously" slowing down the frantic pace of life that carries us along whether we want it to or not.  And that was in the pre-iPhone era, mind you.  The movement started more or less simultaneously in various aspects of our modern life - there is a Slow Food Movement, a book called In Praise of Slowness, a blog called Slow Love Life, albeit that came later, and so on.  

Even in architecture, it was becoming cool, when I was studying architecture from 2001 to 2005, to draw, design, and fabricate by "hand"- molding beautiful architectural adornments painstakingly from raw material to finished products.  The design philosophy of architects of the likes of Billie Tsien and Tod Williams, and Tom Kundig were given as examples in class.  I remembered going on a field trip to see the now-no-longer-existing American Folk Art Museum on W. 53rd Street, New York, designed by the Tsien-Williams team, completed in 2001, and being awe-struck by its fractured façade, consisting of 63 individually cast, copper-bronze panels (which incidentally have been saved from demolition).  The building was torn down recently to make way for an expansion of the Museum of Modern Art.  There was a huge outcry regarding MOMA's controversial decision to demolish this unique, jewel-box-like museum (itself a work of art), whose brief, barely a decade old life span was almost unheard of in the annals of building construction. 

What has got me thinking about slowness, though it is not really relevant to the slowness movement described above, was my recent discovery of a German learning blog called Slow German, posted by someone who periodically reads in a slightly slower pace a short essay in German on various topics to aid people who are interested in learning German.  (It is amazing how many helpful and free resources one can find on-line about almost anything.) I have been frustrated by not being able to break through the barrier between understanding the grammar and vocabulary of German and speaking it spontaneously.  I'm convinced that there is a mysterious threshold which one crosses in learning a new language as an adult, when, quite unbeknownst to you, one day you become able to speak in consecutive sentences about certain subjects in that new language, like the time you came to be able to ride a bicycle.  This of course is just fuzzy thinking on my part; I know full well that nothing will happen unless I put in the time to practice and practice and practice.(But, I'll keep you posted on the day it happens for me, if it does happen at all.)

What follows is a TED talk by the author of In Praise of Slowness, Carl Honore, if you're interested -

Stand up for Health

Writing while standing

Kirk's first DIY project for this summer and the sabbatical following were two hardwood stands which we used to turn our current desks into standing desks. I think he was more excited by the opportunity to build something by hand than the possible health benefits (BBC, NYT) associated with standing more vs. sitting all the time.  From my casual mentioning of shopping for a standing desk and our chance discovery of a lumber store in town, it took Kirk less than four days to put together two stands, meticulously finished and made to fit our respective desks and heights.   

My petite stand

The beginning of the summer break is always the impetus for getting us to give tired resolutions a fresh start.  Today, having doggedly stood for about eight hours in front of our computers, we officially kick-started our summer resolution to get more fit.  Surprisingly it was not as uncomfortable as we anticipated it would be.  I think I'm going to be addicted to it soon and to regard sitting as rather ungainly.  As for Kirk, he would like to reserve his opinion until tomorrow morning, I think.      




26. 06 2014 Update:

Compression socks and
anti-fatigue mat
to the rescue

Actually we are completely accustomed to working standing now.  There is no turning back...

Summertime

And the livin' is easy

Unlike the previous two summers, this one has been especially mild, some hot days in the high 80s/low 90s, interposed with days, in the low 70s, of sustained rain and thunder storms.  All kinds of vegetation in our yard, never before seen, are growing rambunctiously, after having stayed dormant in the ground for the previous two years due to the severe drought we had.

The pleasant weather prompted Kirk to hang up his old hammock in the sunroom, the one he used to sleep in for an entire year when he lived at the dorm at UCSB many, many moons ago.  He bought it in Merida in the Yucatan on a trip, hitch-hiking part of the way, through Mexico, one summer when he was an undergraduate.  (This kind of road trip somehow does not seem very feasible in the present time, at least in the eyes of the older and wiser folks like us.)  

He thought to get another one like it for me so that we could sleep in plein air, as it were. After some searching on the net, he managed to find an outfit in Yucatan that sells almost exactly the same Mayan style of hammocks at an incredibly good price!  He ordered it and got it in no time.  We hung it up side by side with the old one, whose colors are slightly paler than its freshly-minted neighbor.  We've so far spent two and a half nights out there, the half being the one that I called off, rather unnecessarily according to Kirk, due to the severity of the thunder storm we had that night.  

Sleeping outdoors is a little like camping, except that the bathroom facility is close at hand.  One's sense of hearing is especially acute in the dark--kids giggling from somewhere in the neighborhood, probably also camping out, the screeching of cats fighting, the sound of driving rain and outrageous thunder, and the notes of the first bird awakening and the answering trill from another in the early dawn, barely broken. 


07.08.13 Update:

Hostas in bloom

The hostas in the bed by our front walk, which we thought to have been completely decimated by the deer in the neighborhood when we moved here three summers ago, have miraculously revived and re-populated the entire bed, despite my having planted hyacinths there in the fall after we moved in.  And in recent weeks, saturated with rain, they have even pushed out their slender, delicate, lavender-colored flowers to our great surprise and delight.  We have been jealously guarding them from any deer approaching our yard -- that is, as best as we can, for the truth is that there is no stopping the deer munching, en famille, from yard to yard in Bloomington. 

Take it to the Max

i-Mac(ed)

Finally, I took the plunge and converted from PC to Mac. (Some of my readers will probably mutter "It's about time!")  People liken the spiritual divide between devotees of the PC and Mac to Protestantism and Catholicism; to me it was more like a spiritual conversion from Christianity to Zen Buddhism. 

What put me over the edge was that the Windows operating system on my laptop, for some inscrutable reason, kept succumbing to the dreadful BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH.  (Count yourself lucky if you've never experienced it.)  I put up with this daily torment, plus many other software nightmares, for as long as I could, since last July, until my Dell laptop finally quit for good.

What kept me from making the switch sooner was concern over the compatibility between the Mac and the various Autodesk programs which I'm wedded to for architectural design.  But given that Autodesk has begun to accommodate Mac users and make some of their programs compatible with the Mac OS, and given the availability now of software such as Parallels Desktop, which allows one to work in Windows programs without having to reboot, we were finally convinced that it would be safe for me to switch.  Kirk made the switch when he moved to IU two and a half years ago and has never looked back.

After having gotten over the initial difficulty of transferring the data from my old hard drive to the new iOS environment and installing various software programs for the Mac, I've begun to get the hang of the different terminology and different ways of navigating.  What I like best about this super machine is that the Mac operating system is integrated with the Mac's own impeccable and seemingly indestructible hardware and all its peripherals, unlike the Windows setup where its operating system lives in hardware made by others and which tends to go out of sync with operating system updates or simply fall apart in a few years' time.

I've yet to find out how Autodesk programs work on the Mac; I hope the transition will be seamless.

YOLO

'YOLO', an acronym for "You Only Live Once", a slang term which had a meteoric rise and fall in the youth culture earlier this year, has in time trickled down to the general consciousness of the over-50s crowd, except that in its cross-generational evolution the term has acquired a more heightened sense of urgency.  No matter how rash the impulse is, for the young, to live dangerously, the notion that they may not live forever seldom enters their consciousness.  It's quite different for those over-the-hill, for whom death is no longer a possibility in the distant future but a foreseeable certainty which each one of us has to come to terms with.  As 2012 draws to a close, it seems appropriate to reflect a bit on what 'yolo-ing' may mean for some of us, though I feel rather terrified to do so for fear of sounding trite, which, I'm afraid, is unavoidable as the subject has been very thoroughly treated in both high and low-brow literature.

Holstee Manifesto

You all probably have seen this poster somewhere on the web before.  It expresses the YOLO sentiment, for the not quite die-hard cynic, pretty well, I think.  Make of it what you will, I keep the poster nearby my desk to remind me that my time is rapidly running out and I must not twiddle-twaddle it away.  In addition, I  also think that I need somehow to turn my attention more outward, outside of my own concerns, that is, and step out of my comfort zone, so to speak.  These are a couple of my year-end resolutions anyways.  Thinking about taking stock of one's life, I recently came across a TED talk called "A kinder, gentler philosophy of success" by Alain de Botton, a pop culture "philosopher", which I think may help reduce anxiety for some of us.  Here is another TED talk about doing something one loves by a female Palestinian architect, Suad Amiry, which is fun to listen to.

Here is to you "A More Adventurous Year, YOLO!" 
     

Surveying our kingdom

A bouquet of sage

Kirk and I have recently started a practice (his idea) of surveying our "kingdom," or, more accurately, our temporary possession of a speck of the earth, in the few half-hours of fading sun before the dusk sets in.  It was motivated partly by a sense of guilt for having neglected our garden for so long and partly by a sense of urgency born out of the realization that the pleasant late summer evenings are not going to last much longer. (Perhaps we should also take a survey of, metaphorically speaking, the state of our lives...)  We therefore, after dinner, don our colorful gardening boots (sloggers--they're called) and our gloves, brandish our gardening shears, and work and walk our way through the various plots in our yard, picking up fallen branches, cutting down dry rot, pulling up weeds or what look like weeds, and generally attempting to retrieve a sense of control over and order in our tiny kingdom and combat, however futilely, nature's tendency to grow wild and unmanageable.  

My attempt in the past two years to add color and interest to our yard by planting perennials and herbs has not produced much to speak of, I'm sorry to report; what tender shoots have survived the frost and drought have been so completely smothered by weeds and dead leaves that they are hardly recognizable or distinguishable from weeds. I've since learned that there is much more nurturing and caring work to do than just putting down the little plants in the ground, about a half-day's work at most; I had assumed that Mother Nature would take care of these little plants and that they would just mature on their own and before long look like their glossy counterparts in the nursery catalogs.  Alas, to successfully tend and cultivate one's garden requires much more commitment and hard work than I have expended; Kirk laughingly called my gardening experiment my failed attempt to live like a "gentlewoman farmer." 

Bloomington is currently under mandatory water restriction due to this summer's drought which has hit hard several Midwestern States.  Our hope to have a new wisteria vine planted may have to be delayed. The little wisteria offshoot which we transplanted from our neighbor's vine is not doing very well either and not likely to survive, I'm afraid.  Here's hoping our transplantation to the soil of Indiana will fare better. 

  

Calvin, the Cool Cat

Cool Cat Calvin

Calvin has taken to staying for a couple hours in the Sunroom after we finish breakfast.  He shows up right on time, almost every morning, while we are laying out the table for breakfast.  As soon as we let him in, he jumps onto his favorite chair (imagine Wang-Tzu in his favorite spot at the table), and curls up beside me, pushing me (affectionately I'm sure) so that I end up perched on 1/3rd of the seat cushion, for a treat of love and a massage.  Picture me holding a cup or newspaper with my right hand while rubbing Calvin's skull with my left hand.  He stays on the chair after I vacate it, composes himself for a morning nap and keeps Kirk company while he finishes reading the paper.  Kirk, in the past, would trick him out of the room when he finishes breakfast but Calvin has learned not to take the bait so easily and has shown no inclination in the least to stir out of the chair when Kirk holds the door open enticingly.  Kirk has finally conceded the game to the clever Calvin and taken to propping open the screen door with a broom and leaving him alone there.  I wonder what will happen to our morning routine with Calvin when the weather gets cold and we no longer eat breakfast out in the Sunroom.  Stay tuned...

The Clever Calvin

We have quasi-adopted a cat named Calvin who lives two-door down from us on our street. The reason we know these facts about him is because he wears a collar with a tag and tiny bell on his neck.  He is very affectionate, a sucker for belly rubs, and very persistent in seeking attention.  He walks around the neighborhood, visits all the houses, and is, for all we know, greeted affectionately by all.  He often pays us a morning call while we're having breakfast in the Sunroom and then comes back for an evening visit at supper time, with a little tinkling of the bell announcing his arrival.  It isn't because he wants to be fed that he comes around at those hours but because he can usually find us then.  I've come to miss hearing his tinkering bell if he doesn't show up during meal time. 

Calvin started visiting us several months ago; whenever we were out in the yard he would appear, seemingly from nowhere.  As he seemed friendly, we would pat him and play with him a bit.  I was often startled by his tail brushing against my legs when I was doing something in the yard; I even had the uncomfortable feeling of being stalked.  Once we got to know him better, whenever he saw us outside he would follow us closely whichever direction we moved with the intention, which soon became clear, of nudging his way inside our house.  One of his signature maneuvers toward that goal was to dart, of a sudden, in front of us and plump himself down at our feet at every opportunity, intercepting our walk, and eventually, landing his body right at our doorstep, preventing us from opening the door, or more precisely, getting into the house without him.  We were resolute about not letting him into the house at first; so to get rid of him, Kirk and I had to work as a tag team, with one of us occupying his attention while the other sneaking into the house from another door.  Another tactic he used was to sit in front of the Sunroom door and meow pitifully.  

I don't remember when we tacitly decided to let him in, to the Sunroom only, mind you, not inside the house.  Before long, he was on our laps or sitting next to us on the chair and being patted and rubbed to his heart's content.  

One morning last week, I noticed traces of blood on his face when I picked him up, and upon closer examination, I found that his nose was badly cut up.  It was so pitiful that while he looked at me with his doleful eyes, I couldn't bear to look him in the face.  I got the phone number of his owner from his tag and called.  His owner happened to be out of town but luckily his stepson, who was house-sitting, was able to pick him up and take him to the vet.  His stepson told Kirk that Calvin was fine when he let him out that morning.  We don't know what kind of scrape he got himself into to get the tip of his nose cut in half!  We were very relieved to see Calvin again a few days later; he was back to his usual playful self but I'm afraid his face is permanently disfigured.  I wonder if I would be able to let my cat out, if I had one, risking all kinds of danger.  But if you don't, what miserable life it is for them to be always cooped up in the house.  Unlike the domestic canine, strict domesticity and security don't seem to sit well with these independent-minded, freedom-loving creatures, or so I imagine.  As philosophers say in this case, it's not possible for us to know what it is like to be a bat (or, cat). 

Clever Calvin

No-nose Calvin, poor baby

"Life Edited"

Recently I came across a video called Less Stuff, More Happiness by Graham Hill, from one of the TED talks.  Hill advocates for an edited life -- whittling the inessentials from one's life, living in smaller space with the aid of multi-functional design, reducing one's carbon footprint, etc.  He conducted a competition to design a 420 S.F. apartment in New York City to house his choice possessions.  Though one can be cynical, as many commentators were, about Hill's design desiderata -- his possessions which, though few, are an array of embarrassment of riches, I'm intrigued by the idea of editing one's life.  The verb, edit, brings to mind the arduous process of refining a piece of writing by repeatedly paring down the superfluous material until it expresses the author's intention in the most succinct fashion possible, if one considers succinctness and brevity a virtue.  As who you are is partly expressed by the stuff you own, it stands to reason that one needs to be selective and mindful about acquiring and accumulating personal effects; also, by not owing a lot of stuff, one avoids encumbering those who have to sort through one's stuff after one dies, which no doubt is an unpleasant thought.


The desire to simplify one's life occurs to most people about once or twice a year -- at the end and/or beginning of the year.  Just about now, I've been thinking about rounding up clothes and things to take to Goodwill.  I remember landing in the United States some thirty years ago with two suitcases in my hands which held the totality of my belongings; now it takes a semi-trailer truck to move all my and Kirk's stuff.  I have always been attracted by the simple, self-sufficient way of life, in Thoreau's Walden.  Here is a passage from the book about the 10 ft by 15 ft (150 S.F.) cabin he built for himself.  Maybe that is not a realistic model for me, but someday I'd like to build a smallish house, no more than 1,000 S.F., and hope by then I will have whittled down my possessions to feel totally at home in it.  Graham Hill probably can get some inspiration from Christopher Alexander's pattern #78, House for One Person and Frank Lloyd Wright's designs of Usonian Houses, a beautiful example of which is the 1,340 S.F. Jacob's House. 

A commentator on Hill's talk posted a link to a video, called Stuff, of the comedian, George Carlin, talking about American's infatuation with stuff.  It's hilarious.

Remains of the Day

Daily Incense

It has been my habit since August to light an incense stick every morning when I first sit down at my desk.  I brought these 16"- long incense sticks from Taiwan; we found them in a specialty shop in an old district of Taipei where Chinese medicine stores congregate.  The incense emits a very subtle scent with barely visible smoke when lighted.  Each stick burns almost exactly an hour (the ember dies out in 01:00:55), and like sand through the hourglass, the passage of time is made visible through its diminishing length.  I also use it to make sure that I get in my hour's practice at the piano every day. The charred stumps of the incense sticks planted helter-skelter in the incense cup in the picture are the remains of my days. 

Wisteria House Design

Just launched a website, Wisteria House Design, to test the water for hanging out my own shingle.  I'm targeting the timid home owners who are toying with the idea of doing some remodeling work on their houses but don't know where to start.  I used one of the pre-built layouts from Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 to put the website together and it is still very much a work in progress. I'll welcome any input you have to jazz it up a bit.  

One Year Anniversary

Breakfasting @ Sunroom

It was today last year when we signed the paper and took possession, in a way, of our house in Bloomington.  When we got here, wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, fresh from the Title company's office, we discovered that the front door was not locked (properly), and had probably not been locked for the past two months after the previous owners moved out.  At least it boded well for the neighborhood, for that meant the likelihood of crime was pretty low.  As other than what we brought along in the car all our earthly possessions were still being transported to us, we went out to the Mall and bought a tea kettle and an air mattress, hoping that would tide us over till the moving van arrived.  Coming back from the Mall, to our great surprise, we found that we could not open the door with the keys given us at the closing!  After a couple of phone calls, we got a hold of our realtor, who got hold of the sellers' realtor, who came to open the door for us.  We learned that we were handed the wrong key!  A couple of days later, during the 4th of July weekend, after the movers had unloaded all our boxes, the A/C quit working!  Well, that was the beginning of our adventure in Bloomington; the rest is history.  Now that we've been here a year, I've gotten used to the mysterious sound of creaks, moans, and groans coming from some hidden parts of the house and the rumbling sound of the dehumidifier transmitted through the walls to the bedroom from the basement every so many hours. But, overall we are very happy with our house, especially during this time of the year.  The temperature has been in the mid 70's to low 80's, and frequent rain showers help cool the air and quench the earth.  After removing some glass panels in the sunroom, we've been having our breakfast and dinner there almost everyday.


We spent some time yesterday afternoon weeding in the back yard.  It seems to me, now, that weeding is a more monumental and overwhelming task than shoveling snow.  How soon we forget!  The power of human effort is inconsequential in comparison to the tenacity of nature.  Weeds, or what we take to be weeds, grow, like wild mushrooms after rain showers, in every nook and cranny.  If they are not pulled up religiously, they are apt to take over one's entire yard and turn it into the setting of "One Hundred Years of Solitude."       

Crackling Fire

First Fire

We lit our first fire in the fireplace a couple of nights ago. Although there were fireplaces in the four houses we lived in Florida, we had never used them. Somehow they seemed to be more decorative than functional and there wasn't the right kind of weather for one to be in the mood for a crackling fire.  

We weren't really sure if the fireplaces, there are two, one in the living room, one in the basement, had been swept or inspected recently but we took a chance and lit the fire anyway.  After some fiddling with a stuck damper, Kirk managed to start a roaring fire in no time.  It created a cave-like atmosphere of warmth and safety, very primordial.

Speaking of warmth, I have to mention that the heating system in our house is very efficient and that the house itself is very well insulated, in contrast to the most recent house we occupied in Gainesville.  The heating system manages to maintain a constant 72 degree indoor temperature throughout all three floors of the house, seemingly without any effort.  I especially like the feature of the floor registers (heat vents) in the house, which are very common here; they help circulate heated air more efficiently and keep the feet warm on the bare floor.  

Happy Thanksgiving!

The word 'snow', as in "chances for snow", has been uttered for the first time this year in the weather forecast for this Thanksgiving night!  Wouldn't it be great if it were true?!  We are going to Kirk's colleagues, Mark and Joan's house for Thanksgiving dinner and I will be keeping my eyes at the windows at dinner so as not to miss the first indication of falling snow.  Besides, we are now properly geared up to face the snow challenges, with the mighty snow shovel and scraper for the car windows.




Another bit of evidence that we have settled in was that we've gone to our first IU basketball game last night at the Assembly Hall.  Out of the blue our next-door neighbor, Mr. Sam Bell, the famous retired IU track coach, http://www.usatf.org/halloffame/TF/showBio.asp?HOFIDs=16, came over yesterday afternoon and gave me two tickets to the basketball game!  It seems that we've somehow managed to live next-door to people who have season tickets to sporting events but cannot make it to the games all the time.  (To wit, the couple who live in south Florida but keep a pad across from our house in Golf View just to go to Gators games.)  

The basketball game, though not as full of pageantry as those in O-Dome, was a lot of fun.  IU has had a very illustrious history in basketball under the reign of Bobby Knight, the winning-est and most controversial coach of NCAA Basketball, who was fired by IU in fall 2000 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Knight.  During the game they have this "Big Heads" thing - fans waving big cardboard faces of cheesy entertainers at the opponent players behind the backboard during free throws - which was something else!  Compared to what the Gators fans do, i.e., waving skimpy bikinis, this seems like a more tasteful thing to do. 

Finally, after forty some years, I've got to learn to play the piano!  It is like learning a new language at this time of my life but, I suspect, probably not as difficult as learning, say, German or Russian.  You're probably wondering what those disfiguring marks are on the keyboard.  Well, those are drafting dots with inked letters on them to help me memorize the names of the keys; not a very kosher thing to do to a piano, to be sure.  As you know, there is a piano in the basement which comes with the house we bought.  As it turns out it is more like a painted, 'crippled' (two of the pedals being broken), maiden, trapped in the basement of the house.  I had it looked at and learned that the reason why the piano, I suspect, as well as the billiard table, was offered free with the house was probably because that it was not possible to be moved upstairs without first being taken apart.  The piano technician told me that as it is the piano is worth about $250 and I can have it refurbished and tuned for about $1000 but it would only then raise its value to about $500 and I'd never be able to get it out of the basement without having it taken apart!  He strongly recommended against my doing anything about it but learning to play it.  According to him, though sounding flat, all the keys work.  I have since been taking piano lessons once a week and practicing about an hour every day.  


I hope y'all have a great Thanksgiving wherever you are.  Be safe and enjoy the festive occasion.  I will be singing and dreaming, let it snow, let it snow ... 

What do you do?

To me, the innocuous "what do you do?", the first question one is likely to be asked upon being introduced, is a very fraught one.  It has lately been asked of me rather frequently; being new in town, we seem to be constantly introduced to people whom we meet for the first time on different occasions.  These days an awkward pause inevitably follows that question and the answer I come up with is usually unsatisfactory to me.  The reason of my pause and dissatisfaction is complicated and by writing about it I am hoping to sort it out for myself, a little bit at a time.


One of the fallouts of being unemployed is that it prevents one from giving a no-brainer answer right off the bat when asked what one does for a living - an answer which seems not only to define one professionally but also as a person.  It gives people a convenient handle to place one in a social milieu, a name which calls up instant images, whether or not they have any basis in reality or resemble one in any way, in the mind of the person one's being introduced to and with which that person throws over one like a veil.  Without that convenient title, one is lost in the myriad crowd of nameless humanity, indistinct and hard to pin down.


What do I do for a living?  In a not too distant past, I used to be able to reply with alacrity that "I am an architect!", which, like a badge of honor, was something to be proud of.  I was, however, never comfortable saying that, for it gave people an erroneous impression about me which the title 'architect' conjured up in people's mind.  I acquired the title late in life through the conventional path of education, internship, and examination, which took up the past 10 years of my life.  As such, compared to a seasoned architect, my architectural career was only at its infancy and now already interrupted before it had barely taken off.  Am I an architect, even though I am not 'making a living' as one but holding an active registration?  How much does the title 'architect' describe me?  Very little, I'm afraid.  


So, what do I do for a living?  "Nothing at all at present" would be the proper answer. People look at me funnily if I say so.  Someone said to me recently that "... while you, you do nothing!", another that "so, you, just stay at home?"  It was remarks like these which got me thinking.  What does 'making a living' mean?  Is making a living living?  Are there alternative ways to live than devoting all of your life to making a living?  It seems to me that as this enterprise of making a living tends to be very time-consuming or all-consuming that we substitute it for living.  It becomes living de facto and takes on so much significance as to define a person's life and identity...


I'm afraid that I'm not all that clear about what my thinking is regarding this question of livelihood but I'll continue to work on it.  Of course, I am well aware that I won't be writing about this if I had to worry about where my next meal will come from.