franceswu

Yay for my sweet husband

2008-12-05T20:37:43Z

OK, I'll apologize up front for gratuitous bragging about my spouse.

We typically do our grocery shopping on Tuesday night after work. This is sometimes a bit torturous since we are inclined to be a bit cranky and tired as we struggle through making out a grocery list and then make our way through the throng at Schnucks right before dinner. Then we typically come home and cook in a kitchen that is less than functional in it's messiness.

In order to make the process easier this week, we were talking on Monday night and agreed ahead of time about splitting up chores for Tuesday. He made the grocery list during the day and e-mailed it to me. So I printed it and went to the grocery store alone. While I was shopping, he unloaded and re-loaded the dishwasher, took out the trash, cleaned off the counter tops and the table and started running laundry. After I got home, he helped me bring in groceries and I cooked dinner. We managed to have a nice dinner at the table by about 7:30 with no arguments, frustration or irritation on anyone's part. It was fantastic.

Later on that evening, as I was thanking him for all the help with housework, he stopped me and said, "So basically what you mean is, thank you for doing what a husband is supposed to do." I was caught off guard for a moment and then thought, "wow, thank you God for sending me such a great spouse". Additionally I would say, thank you Mary Beth and Garry for raising Duncan to be a good husband. Oh yeah, and he also does sweet stuff like warming up my side of the mattress while I"m getting ready for bed at night. :)

Things that Make Me Happy Today

2008-09-23T15:45:37Z

I've been feeling kind of stressed out lately thanks to the impending wedding. Last minute details are such a pain to try to all get tacked down. However I am still really excited about getting married in 18 days. It feels a little surreal that it is so soon. It's not really helping that I took on an extra project for work last month that is turning into a lot more work and stress than I had anticipated.

So in an attempt to be more positive I've decided to list off all the things that I am happy, excited and/or grateful for today.

1. I'm happy to be able to earn extra money through work, even if it does add to my stress levels.
2. I'm excited that I have so much of the planning part of my wedding completed and I'm very excited to see the whole thing come together soon.
3. Our friends and family have been very generous in our wedding gifts and that has been very touching to us.
4. We found out yesterday that a former roommate of mine is coming from Pittsburgh for the wedding. Since I haven't seen her in several years, I"m pretty thrilled by this.
5. We also found out that Duncan's maternal grandmother is going to be there for the wedding. She is older and has been in deteriorating health and there has been some question of whether or not she would be up for the trip. So we're very pleased that she'll be with us.
6. My bachelorette party is this Friday and I"m excited to see folks and go out for a good time.
7. I'm up to date for the moment on my thank you notes.
8. Our wedding bands turned out more beautifully than I had anticipated they would. I can't wait to get to wear it every day.
9. My future sister in law is in the process of buying a house on Cape Cod and I"m very excited about the prospect of getting to go visit her both there and in Boston.
10. I've been having a blast putting together Duncan's wedding gift and I'm very touched by all the help I've been getting from family members in assembling it.
11. I found out this morning that my friend who does my hair is doing my hair and make up for me as my wedding present. This is a very generous gift as she's traveling to do my hair and make up for the wedding.
12. I genuinely enjoy spending time with Duncan every day. I couldn't be happier about the notion that I"m marrying someone who I so thoroughly enjoy talking to and doing the daily tasks of life with.

Latest Myers Briggs

2008-09-03T17:37:43Z

ESTJ - "Administrator". Much in touch with the external environment. Very responsible. Pillar of strength. 8.7% of total population.

Free Jung Personality Test (similar to Myers-Briggs/MBTI)

I"m always bouncing back and forth between being an E and an I. Odd

RIP George Carlin

2008-06-23T15:02:46Z

It made me significantly more sad than I would have assumed it would to read this this morning. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080623/ap_on_en_tv/obit_george_carlin

I remember being in one of the computer labs at Wash U as an undergrad and I was working really hard trying to finish a paper. So I was stressed out and someone sent me a link to a George Carlin stand up routine. I laughed till tears ran down my face. I laughed so much that the guy sitting next to me asked what in the world I was watching. It was a welcome moment of relief and that was something that Carlin's comedy could often do. He made squirm inducing social commentary both incredibly insightful and unbelievably funny. I will miss seeing him produce new work.

My fiance amuses me

2008-06-13T16:13:36Z

The air conditioner was on the fritz yesterday morning, just in time for a really hot mid-June Memphis day. It wasn't so hot that I felt like I was swimming through the air quite yet, but I can feel that it's coming soon. I managed to contact the landlord and get the air conditioner fixed by the time I got home yesterday afternoon, but it had just come on when I got there, so it was still pretty warm when I was contemplating cooking dinner.

All of this is a long way around to say that the soup I had been planning on making did not seem nearly as appetizing once I got home as I had thought it would earlier in the day. Soup, even of the incredibly tasty cheesy variety that's flavored with sherry, is just not appetizing when it's hot out if you don't have a functional air conditioner. So I was incredibly happy when my beloved showed up from work, slightly later than expected, because he had thoughtfully stopped by the grocery to buy the ingredients he needed to make us pork chops braised in a citrus fruit sauce with saffron rice and green beans for dinner.

I rather dislike cleaning up my kitchen, so it had been some time last weekend since I had managed to unload and reload the dishwasher the last time. Duncan, not only cooked dinner, but he also cleaned the kitchen after we got done eating. Since he had done all of these lovely things, he argued that he deserved affection for his efforts. I couldn't disagree with him and I have to say that once again, he has confirmed the wisdom of deciding to keep him for the next 60 years or so.

My life is eating my life

2008-05-06T18:13:45Z

The last few weeks have been absolutely exhausting. I nearly cried this morning when my Mom called me to tell me I need to come to town to talk to the florist to pick out flowers for my wedding. It's not that I don't care, but we've been beating a hot path up and down 55 from Memphis to Hattiesburg and from Memphis to Jackson on 40 and living out of a suitcase over the last few weeks. Happily I convinced her that I do not need to come talk to vendors until after I've gotten myself moved on the 17th and we've been to the beach and back at the end of the month.

I'm not complaining about the enjoyable time we've had visiting family. It has been wonderful. I am complaining because everything I have going on right now is really stressing me out. If I'm not at work trying to be productive while worrying about getting everything else done, I'm at home dealing with moving or wedding related stuff and wondering if I'm getting enough done at work. My brother commented to me this morning that it sounds like I've been living in the spin cycle and I realized that that feels apropos. It just seems that most of life is a never ending series of tasks that I'll never quite have completed.

I'm sure that there will be stuff in my inbox on the day after I die, but the reality that I'm not really getting to enjoy most of the process of planning my wedding cause I'm wedging it into the rest of my life is irking the snot out of me. Heck at this point, I'd settle for just feeling that I was getting to enjoy most any part of my day. In spite of needing to pack I've promised myself the right to sleep in this Saturday and I fully intend to keep that promise. I will be so grateful when I've made it past October and then all I have to do is enjoy my daily life again and not kill myself trying to arrange the transition state.

Meme thingy

2008-03-18T01:25:48Z

"Reply to this post, and I will list three things I love about you. Maybe more than three. Then repost to your own journal and spread the love."

Big News

2008-02-29T16:58:06Z

So for those of you not attached to me on Facebook, I"m engaged! Yes, I'm terribly excited and my ring is really beautiful.

It's All So Exciting I just Had to Share

2007-12-04T19:41:15Z

For some odd reason I had never really looked at Forever 21's clothes before today. I realized after doing so that every item of clothing I currently desire is there at a remarkably affordable price.

Google Image Meme

2007-12-03T23:38:59Z

Search Google Images for the answer to each, and choose a pic from the first page of results.

1. The age you will be on your next birthday:

2. A place you'd like to travel:

3. My favorite place:

OK, I admit I cheated on this one but I couldn't justify putting in a picture of other people at the bar with their friends when I have so many great ones of my own. :)

4. Your favorite subject:

5. Your favorite food:

6. Your favorite animal:

7. Your favorite color:

8. The town in which you were born:

9. The town in which you live:

10. The name of a past pet:

11. The first name of a past love:

12. Your nickname/screenname:

13. Your first name:

14. Your middle name:

15. Your last name:

16. A bad habit of yours:

17. Your first job:

18. Your grandmother's name:

This Made Me Laugh

2007-11-12T20:21:39Z

Never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet, and her Franceswu.

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

This is Hilarious

2007-11-05T20:14:02Z

What's Your Karaoke Theme Song?

Your Karaoke Theme Song is "Since U Been Gone"
You are a very expressive and genuine person.
You're not so emotional that you wear your heart on your sleeve - but you're not afraid to show how you're truly feeling.

Whether you're singing along in the car or singing on stage, your favorite songs make you get a little carried away.
You're definitely the type most likely to dream of becoming a rock star!

You might also sing: "Livin' La Vida Loca," "I Will Survive," or "Hollaback Girl"

Stay away from people who sing: "I'll Make Love to You

"http://www.blogthings.com/whatsyourkaraokethemesongquiz/"

Reading Lists

2007-10-25T21:36:05Z

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today). As usual, bold what you have read, italicize those you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. Add an asterisk to those you've read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude*
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel*
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby-Dick*
Ulysses
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice*
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies*
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife*
The Iliad
Emma*
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods*
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Memoirs of a Geisha*
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian: A Novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera*
Brave New World
The Fountainhead*
Foucault's Pendulum*
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo*
Dracula*
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel*
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility*
The Picture of Dorian Gray*
Mansfield Park*
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela's Ashes: A Memoir*
The God of Small Things*
A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being*
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves*
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake: A Novel
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
Catcher in the Rye*
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an Inquiry into Values*
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity's Rainbow
The Hobbit
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

franceswu @ 2007-10-16T12:42:00

2007-10-16T17:54:17Z

These are 5 things from my interests list and why I like them. If you respond, I"ll pick 5 things from your interest list to ask you to explain why you like them to me.
1. tennessee walking horses
I started riding walking horses when I was 12. My Mom grew up with horses and my sister and I had always enjoyed riding when we'd done trail riding when we were younger. So when my Mom found a place to take riding lessons we were both interested. I spent a good deal of my time in high school at our barn taking care of our horses and riding. It provided me with a sport, a hobby and a regular social outlet all through high school.
2. robert earl keen
Robert Early Keen is a singer from Texas who sings alt country. Seth introduced me to his music shortly after we started dating. Beyond the fact that his overall musical style is basically infectious he also has extremely clever lyrics. I"m a sucker for clever lyrics.
3. progressive era
The progressive era is my main period of interest as a historian. Most of my major pieces have been about some aspect of the period. I find it fascinating as a time period particularly in women's history because it was the major period when women's private volunteering and social causes took on a political dimension. As a result, a great deal of our current social policy particularly for women and families originated in this period. Women were also enfranchised during the Progressive Era and that has a good deal of interplay with the flourishing of women's organized political activism.
4. kasey chambers
Kasey Chambers is an Australian singer. I was also introduced to her by Seth while we were dating. She has a fabulously expressive voice and again she's a great lyricist.
5. art deco
I've enjoyed Art Deco design most of my life. I love the use of geometry, symmetry, natural materials and the sensibilities of fusing man made structures with their natural environment that dominated thinking in architecture and design in this period. It is also, ironically, the stylistic period that roughly corresponds to the Progressive Era.

I'm a Dork

2007-06-14T21:47:32Z

I scored 10 out of 12 on this fun Encarta quiz! Can you do better?

A Stately Quiz of Unflagging Interest

http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/departments/education_1/Default.aspx?page=quiz93&Quizid=93>1=10056&qpt=results

In other news, I'm under contract for my first book chapter, and I may be under contract for a second one fairly soon.

Neat

2007-04-28T04:32:31Z

Stolen from Chris

2007-04-19T20:20:41Z

Thanks for sharing this one goes out to Chris H. who is making his several yearly updates to his blog. http://freelanceswitch.com/clients/12-breeds-of-client-and-how-to-work-with-them/

To any of my friends who enjoy internet radio as much as I do

2007-04-17T20:12:34Z

Hi, it's Tim from Pandora,

I'm writing today to ask for your help. The survival of Pandora and all of Internet radio is in jeopardy because of a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, DC to almost triple the licensing fees for Internet radio sites like Pandora. The new royalty rates are irrationally high, more than four times what satellite radio pays and broadcast radio doesn't pay these at all. Left unchanged, these new royalties will kill every Internet radio site, including Pandora.

In response to these new and unfair fees, we have formed the SaveNetRadio Coalition, a group that includes listeners, artists, labels and webcasters. I hope that you will consider joining us.

Please sign our petition urging your Congressional representative to act to save Internet radio: http://capwiz.com/saveinternetradio/issues/alert/?alertid=9631541

Please feel free to forward this link/email to your friends - the more petitioners we can get, the better.

Understand that we are fully supportive of paying royalties to the artists whose music we play, and have done so since our inception. As a former touring musician myself, I'm no stranger to the challenges facing working musicians. The issue we have with the recent ruling is that it puts the cost of streaming far out of the range of ANY webcaster's business potential.

I hope you'll take just a few minutes to sign our petition - it WILL make a difference. As a young industry, we do not have the lobbying power of the RIAA. You, our listeners, are by far our biggest and most influential allies.

As always, and now more than ever, thank you for your support.

tim_signature.jpg
-Tim Westergren
(Pandora founder)

On Vacation :)

2007-04-02T21:43:08Z

After an awful day of traveling yesterday we finally made it to Montana at about 1:00 a.m this morning. To put this in context, we got up at 3:30 a.m. the morning before to catch a 6:00 a.m. flight to Minneapolis where we caught an 8:15 flight to Kalispell, Montana that would have had us here by about 1:00 p.m.

Unfortunately, there were mechanical problems with the landing gear that they were concerned enough with that we turned the plane around about 2/3rds of the way here and flew all the way back to Minneapolis. We then spent the next 9 hours drinking, window shopping, eating, watching movies and trying to catch some sleep in awful airport chairs while we waited for the next flight out. To Northwest's credit they had re-routed everyone on the plane by the time we walked off the boarding ramp in Minneapolis. We also got 11,000 frequent flier miles for the hassle of having to endure the hassle of turning around etc.

Needless to say we were extremely happy to crawl into bed last night and sleep very deeply till we got up this morning around 10. So far we've managed to drive in to Whitefish, wander around and find out when the local brewery does tours, and drive around to surrounding towns to tour and eat lunch. We've seen gorgeous mountains, complete with 3 different snow showers and a river carving through the middle of them. There are also multiple things with very entertaining names and signs that we plan to go back later in the week and take lots of pictures of. I think I'm off to nap and watch the snow some more and later on we're going to watch a show about grizzly bears and sit in the hot tub after dinner.

I'm an Aunt Again!

2007-03-11T21:55:14Z

I just got home from my 2nd successful conference appearance. My paper was well received and it was definitely nicer to have an easy time traveling and to get to really spend time listening to other people's papers and getting to know my colleagues I was presenting with. The conference organizer is trying to get our papers published as a compilation, but the key note speaker also offered to consider my paper for publication in a journal her department edits and referees. She also suggested that she'd give me a spot in her Ph.D. program if I wanted to come to SLU and work with her. I wasn't sure if she necessarily could just do that until I looked at the copy of her business card she gave me and realized she's their department chair. We had a good time post symposium talking about progressive era federal legislation. Yeah I know that makes me a dork but it also made me happy.

I also had a wonderful time staying with friends while I was there. It was great to get to see them and to have dinner, hang out etc. as part of my weekend. And of course, the news that is the title of the posting. I checked my cell phone messages after I got home a few minutes ago to find that my sister had a little boy at about 9 a.m. this morning in San Antonio. He was 10 days early so a bit of a surprise, but he's 8 lbs. 2 oz., 18 inches long and they named him Charles. I'm really excited. :)

This Absolutely Cracked Me Up

2007-02-19T18:28:26Z

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRjVeRbhtRU

A room with a view

2007-02-15T20:44:43Z

An interesting thing happened to me at work today. I got a new office! It's very exciting to me that a. I have my own office and b. I have two windows and a nice view of downtown, more specifically of the Pyramid and St. Jude's. Well I have my own office except for a short span of time on Thursday when our statistician is in to finish up some projects he began for us last semester. Prior to this, I was in the room we affectionately call "the bowling alley" because it's a long parallel inner hall room that runs right next to our long narrow floor kitchen. I was originally in there with 3 other people when I first started working in this building. However, for the last 6 months the bowling alley has been mine alone, and I had a nice blank wall to stare at. Now I have my own space with windows, and I feel very swanky and grown up in it. :)

On Feeling Rooted

2007-02-06T06:04:32Z

It's odd when you get to a point in your life when the feeling of not being solidly attached to a place is more disheartening than the reality that being attached to a place means giving up the possibility of living elsewhere. I suppose I might be having all these thoughts since I'm entering my second semester post master's degree and am also in a bit of limbo about how much longer I'll get to keep my current job. Apparently, the funding is there for me to get a substantial raise and benefits starting in May when my current contract expires if all the hoops get jumped through properly.

One of the most odd facets of academia, beyond the tiny, entirely interwoven and incestuous network that comprise it, is the degree to which departmental politics affects your ability to do your job. You would think that in a large school, which has serious ambitions of trying to establish itself as a national research power to be reckoned with, that a professor securing grant money to do important research that informs private grant foundations, local government officials and the state legislature in its policy making decisions about children and families would be something you'd be pleased to have happening for your tenured professors. And yet, the big if in my job security comes down to whether or not our department chair ultimately decides that my boss is spending too much of his time on research and not enough teaching students.

Now I realize, that teaching is the fundamental job of any University. Without teaching professors there would be no students, and no income streams to do things like turn the lights on etc. However, no University really has national standing or much to offer in the way of a graduate program that cannot provide real scholarship, published works, and internships/real work experience in academia to its graduate students.

But anyway, on the topic of feeling rooted. I've realized here lately that I've been feeling anxious because I want to feel that I"m more permanently settled into my life here than I am. There are certain points, when you decide that you'd like your life to take a certain track, but it requires other people's cooperation for you to get what you want, and then you get to feel helpless for a while as other people make decisions that affect you. Realizing that I want to make my life here in Memphis is liberating from the perspective that it has opened the possibility of much deeper richer experiences for me than I would have had had a yielded to the urge to be a vagabond. I'm not saying I don't ever get itchy feet, but I feel like this is what I really want for myself. So in that spirit, I am trying to take steps to grow my roots deeper into the soil here.

Waiting to hear about job stuff is anxiety provoking, but I did have a lovely experience this evening that made me feel more secure in the midst of my waiting. I went to a meeting with my grandparents of the West TN Historical Society. Now, as you might imagine, this is an org that is largely comprised of people over 65. However, there are people who participate who are active as local historians. So going gave me the chance to run into my department chair, who I had not seen since graduation, and have a great time catching up, and to talk to our local archivist who I need to visit for work this week. I realized as I was going into the meeting, running into people that I know in a primarily professional context, that I know people here now. The fact that other people in my profession know me, and are happy to see me at local events, was just great.

franceswu @ 2006-12-27T14:12:00

2006-12-27T20:13:55Z

I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take Frances anymore!

Which movie was this quote from?

Christmas Doings

2006-12-18T03:47:40Z

I realized I haven't posted a real entry in a very long time, so I thought it might be nice for the 3 or so people who read this and care to get an update on my life. Although I am in full on Christmas stuff mode, it really doesn't feel like Christmas yet. That could be because it's been running around 70 outside as our day time high this last week, but I think it also must have something to do with the fact that I can't get over how quickly this year has gone by.

I've finished my Christmas shopping officially, baked 3 batches of Christmas cookies, discovered the joy of egg nog with really good bourbon in it (thanks honey), been to a Christmas party, seen several Advent programs at church, seen the Nutcracker, sang the Messiah, bought and decorated a Christmas tree, and wrapped gifts. Now all I have to do is overeat a few more times, sing some carols, light a candle, go to church and exchange gifts and it'll all be over with. Upon reflection, it's funny to me how attached to Christmas rituals I am. I suppose that comes with the territory when you're a historian, but it's always been an important part of feeling like I"ve done what needs to be done in order to feel that I marked the occasion properly and truly celebrated. Hopefully actually being in Christmas week will help deepen my sense of Christmas cheer. :)