Ladies Rule

Why are women so damn awesome? I just got done taking a four-week Ladies' Bike Maintenance Class from the Bike Library. Some guys I know got jealous hearing about it and asked if a "Gentlemen's" Bike Maintenance Class was in the works. An additional co-ed class would be great, but long live the ladies. Under the tutelage of the ever-patient Cody, we learned to change tires, take apart our brakes, change brake pads, and adjust derailleurs. Everyone was friendly and helped each other, and I got no sense that anyone felt silenced or that they couldn't ask a question because it was too dumb. In fact, after a lecture on gears, we collectively ambushed Cody and asked, "Umm...so which are the high gears and which are the low gears again?"

It reminded me of the time I helped plan a conference with a committee of women (and one extraordinary man), and it was such a pleasant mix of cooperative work and fun. Such a difference from the too many hours of my life I've spent in rooms in which the dudes have been talking to each other and the ladies have been staring into space and/or having murderous thoughts. What's up with that? Does our culture brainwash boys into buying into some toxic mix of competition and personal agendas? Ick. I wish I could go back in time and attend all-girl schools.

On top of everything else great about the class, I feel much more bonded to my bike, many of whose parts I'd never even taken a close look at before.

(This photo stolen from Cody and Steve's blog, my face happily obscured by a fender, but Stud McMuffin's way cuter face visible. We were examining the derailleur, which I like to pronounce with a cheesy French accent.)

Since I have just entered Dissertation-Finishing Hell, the bike class might be my last extracurricular activity for a while. It was a good one.

On a Cuter Note

Some souvenirs found on the famous lower level of the Kyobo Book Centre:

Flossie Away from Home

We just returned from a week away from College Town, visiting a place that couldn't be any more different: Seoul, South Korea. My mom has been living there for the past couple of years since she retired, so my brother and Mr. Flossie and I made the 13-hour flight to pay her a visit.

It was great to spend quality time with the fam, but I have to say that Seoul is getting to be a bit too dystopian and Blade Runner-y for my taste (keeping in mind that I've now lived the provincial life in College Town for ten years, and also that I'm a person, constitutionally, for whom a trip to Best Buy is borderline too stimulating).

Seoul is so big, so crowded, and so polluted. My mom actually lives in Incheon, which used to be a separate port city, but now seems to be continuous with the Seoul megatropolis. Our hotel was in a neighborhood called New Songdo City, which is still under construction on land reclaimed from the sea. Here is the under-construction park outside our window at the Sheraton. You would be able to see the ocean in the distance but for a persistent fog/haze every day.
Ornamental cabbages (?) planted in the streetlamps (??) didn't disguise the fact that nature was not exactly being prioritized in the rush to develop. The only birds I saw all week were two magpies squawking high in the facade of the Sheraton.
But there were redeeming prospects. A human-friendly space was tucked into the shadow of my mom's apartment complex: a little market where people bought fish and produce. Bulk radishes, anyone?
And there's my mom, who takes the subway everywhere and doesn't own a car. So who has the better carbon footprint, my distaste for the decidedly industrial aesthetics of Incheon aside? Finally, there was the uneasy reflection, as Mr. F and I drove home from the airport after our trip was over, that Iowa is no less constructed a an environment than Seoul, only not as visibly so. Our agricultural system is just as unnatural and no more sustainable than the most rampant urban development.

Alas. Nostalgia for home is all well and good, but are Iowa's bucolic rolling hills and the birds at my backyard feeder just our version of the cabbage in the lamppost?

Winter Sets In

Just a few weeks ago, College Town looked like this:


Today, here are the strata of gray outside my library study carrel window:

All Hail the Labelmaker

I bought this labelmaker recently, and I daresay it has started a revolution in the Flossie household. Now we have plastic bins in the basement and the attic with the following labels: holidays [lights, ornaments...], party [paper plates, tablecloths...], games, toys, presents [wrapping paper, ribbon...], garden, etc.

We also have an old desk with many drawers that has become an expanded junk drawer, with labeled drawers for candles, adhesives [tape, post-its], batteries, and light bulbs. It is so nice finding a bit of ribbon or a pack of batteries or nightlight bulbs somewhere else in the house and knowing exactly where it should go.
So far, I have labeled one Tupperware of leftover spaghetti with the date, but I see much more potential: perhaps labeling freshly opened chip bags and cracker boxes (things that don't get eaten quickly around here) with the date they were opened.

Labeling is so much fun, I keep trying to think of more things to label. Perhaps Mr. Flossie needs to be labeled?

It's OK to Be Vintage

I picked up this frog-green Schwinn Speedster for $45 at my friendly neighborhood bike library this morning.
From what I can tell from the Interwebs, this model is circa the early 1970s. What a coincidence—so am I. A three-speed, it finds hills rough going—as do I.

I turned 37 last Monday, and though I did my share of bitching about being old, in my heart of hearts it was not really all that traumatic. It helps to be at a moment in my life when I feel like generally speaking, I have it somewhat together, though (of course) at any given moment I do not feel like I have it together at all. By which I mean to say that I have a job. I don't take having a job for granted, since I only got my first real, post-grad-student job a year ago. Fingers crossed for no layoffs at the U.

Thirty-seven was always a mythical age for me anyway, as it was the age of my favorite high school teacher. When I was seventeen, I thought, "I can't wait until I'm 37!" It seemed like a great life, to have the option to live in a house with a front porch in the city, and to sit on the steps of said front porch on a nice evening, with a guy you like, sipping wine. I hope to be doing a lot of that this year. When my Schwinn and I aren't taking on those hills.

Winterization Quiz

Which of the following home winterization techniques did Flossie learn the hard way?

a) Lay a path of nonskid welcome mats on the front porch between the front door and the porch steps.

b) Turn off the water supply to the garden hose and unhook the hose.

c) Replace the furnace filter.

d) Run the lawn mower until it is out of gas.

e) Plug in the cord to that insulation-sock thing that covers the water pipes in our garage.

The answer, dear readers, is B. One winter the water in the hose froze and backed up into our basement, bursting the pipes. The next spring, when I turned on the hose to water my flowers, the basement got a watering instead.