Nov. 6th, 2012

bearshorty: (Default)
It's Election Day!

My parents are staying with me since Sunday night, since there is still no heat or power in their house. And they are not expecting it at least until Friday. So they went from extreme cold to extreme heat since in the last couple of day the heating in my apartment building was working overtime.

At least we finally solved the problem of a faulty bedroom heater that was pouring out steam and making our bedroom a sauna with wet walls and condensation. While we are waiting for super or whoever to come look at it, we just took the cover off and turned the heater off inside. It actually still gives off some heat and I even left the window a bit open this morning in both the living room and the bedroom. Finally today the inside temperature is just right and the walls are dry.

Bear left yesterday to his parents' house, so he could vote today, save gas a bit by going to work from his parents' house this week, since gas is still a problem in New York, and also not live in close crowded proximity to my parents making everyone a bit more comfortable. And while I miss him, I recognize the necessity of him being at his parents' house this week. Mostly for voting and saving gas.

Since my parents are here, we all drove our polling station in Staten Island this morning bright and early at 6:30. I'm very glad that the time charge happened this last Sunday, so that I can actually wake up at 6 without a problem. We went to vote and passed many houses that were flooded - lots of furniture and other garbage in front of the house. In my parents' community, more than half the cars were done and marked for hauling away.

I filled out my voting form (I miss the old lever machines). I did vote for one Republican - our state senator, but the rest were all Democratic, of course. Unfortunately, my father managed to convince my mother to vote Republican. Argh. Well, at least I could cancel our my Dad's vote. My voting form wouldn't scan in one of the machines, so I had to switch to another one. At least it worked out. Then, Papa dropped Mama back at their house for the day - to warm it up with gas and clean up more - and drove me to work. He drove me to work yesterday too, that part is pretty nice. For Local College, yesterday and tomorrow, I have to deal with subway changes because of the Hurricane so it is much easier to just carpool right now.

My students at University were very excited that the Writing Program cancelled final exams in order to adjust to the schedule, since we missed a week of classes. We will spend good time on the papers, though and I will have less time at the end to grade them. I wrote Assignment 4 this morning and we had good classes discussing Yoshino, our new reading about "covering."

It is a little weird to be in my apartment with my parents in the next room since this is my space. My Mom is cooking though, so I won't complain.

I'm going to try to catch up a bit on my blog and be more consistent at it. I just get tired at the end of the day and there are many other things I can do.

I did finish reading "Emma" and I am in the middle of Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall." My Dad gave it to me as a present so I'm reading it. I'm usually a bit wary of historical novels of English history since I know it a bit too well and the characters need to match to my view of them and not be too off and the time needs to feel authentic enough. And this book is pretty good - I'm not throwing it at the wall or anything. It is about Henry VIII divorce with Thomas Cromwell, a London lawyer, as the main character. My brain is being weird. It took me seeing Jane Seymour's name several times to stop for my brain confusing her with Jane Grey. My brain is clearly too tired.
bearshorty: (Default)
I'm going to do a list since that seems to be the easiest way to catch up. So here are my October highlights


• Medusa visiting - I haven't seen her in person in about two years so it was really awesome that she moved much closer to New York and could come visit. We watched silly TV and it was like no time has passed. Great Columbus Day weekend.

• Marianna’s bday - and Adama's too. He turned 40 while Marianna turned 32 and we celebrate at the Indian buffet in Queens we all like. Bear and I took the subway there and had a nice monthly friend gathering. Yeva, Janna and I got them a joint massage gift certificate as a present.

• Battling a cold – now a fun highlight but I did have a big cold for like half the month, I even stayed with my parents one night so I wouldn't have to take the train with the cold when my carpool person was on little vacation. I'm better now but that was not fun.

• Grading and grading and folder review - I did another marathon grading session before my folder review. The review itself went well. But now that I live with Bear, I can't go to sleep at 12 and wake up at 6 to grade. I even slept in the living room so I could let him sleep more. So I need to actually break down my grading so that I could go to sleep like a normal person at these times.

• Ikea and Coney Island Halloween of Horror - October 20th and 21st was a really great weekend. First Bear and I went to IKEA to pick up a living room lamp and a side table (and we ended up with $100 worth of little things). We went to the Brooklyn IKEA in Red Hook, right next to a community farm with a Halloween Fest, so we picked up a little pumpkin for Bear to carve. He later made a vampire face. And in the evening we went to Luna Park in Coney Island for their Halloween of Horror evening. We got discount tickets from LivingSocial. I loved the haunted houses/mazes while Bear loved the rides. I just went on a baby coaster and mild rides - I'm not a fan of rides and turn you upside down. I did cheer Bear on with a cup of hot cider.


• Pea soup and tuna-pasta casserole and cleaning and awesomeness of domesticity - The other great part of that great October weekend was just being at home and cooking and cleaning. I made a pea soup with beef - a first for me, and it came out great. It was just a very relaxing day. Bear and I made the casserole together and cleaned together too and even the chores were fun to do together.


• “Emma” - I finally finished it. I do like Mr. Knighley quite a lot, maybe even more than Mr. Darcy (blasphemy, I know). He is just so practical and says what he means and I love that quality in a person. And I love his relationship with Emma.

• RS Games - October was the posting month and fairy-tales and legends was just a great theme. And the mods are putting together an ebook, which is going to be like 1000 pages. Pure awesomeness.

• Hurricane Sandy - of course, all our plans for the end of October went out of the way because of Sandy. Bear and I did get an unexpected week at home with no work but it wasn't like a vacation or anything. We went to see my grandparents a few times - they are ok, they just don't have an elevator, heat or phone right now, but their home attendants do check on them and bring them food. We did go grocery shopping for them and Coney Island is getting a bit better and less apocalyptic looking. Going to their building last Wednesday was a bit scary.

• Halloween - since we couldn't really have a proper Halloween and I couldn't go out like I originally planned, Bear and I had a mini-halloween by getting some candy, having the pumpkin and watching "Halloween" on DVD. It is actually the first movie we ever watched together, in that one week in the beginning of college where we were just friends before we started dating. It is once of Bears favorite movies and maybe six years ago, when it was briefly in movie theaters for Halloween, I made sure to get tickets. It was really great to watch it on the big screen.

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