Blowing & Drifting

I spent pretty much all of Friday serving as a handler – like the security agents who keep tabs on journalists in North Korea, only with less authority. Rather than preventing the subversion of the state, my job entailed managing the campus visit of two staffers from a foundation to which we had recently submitted a [...]

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Today is my sixth anniversary of working at Carleton. I’ve now been working at Carleton longer than I’ve held in any other paying job and even longer, finally, than I toiled (for far less pay) in grad school. And a lot has changed in those six years: a new house in Northfield, a second daughter, [...]

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A few weeks ago, my colleague Nancy Braker, the director of Carleton’s Cowling Arboretum, sent out a message seeking volunteers for the Arb’s yearly tree inventory. I’ve been waiting literally years for a chance like this, so I asked about the time commitment, which turned out to be quite manageable. Since my office work is [...]

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In going out of town for a conference last week, I took the opportunity to track my email messages at work over the days I was out of the office. By the end of the day before I left for the trip, I had emptied my inbox. I let everything pile up while I was [...]

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Belatedly, here a few photos from last week’s grand visit to Walla Walla, where I enjoyed a fantastic conference at Whitman College, great networking socializing, excellent food and drink, and some wonderful scenery. A view from our turboprop flight from Seattle to Walla Walla: circular fields irrigated by water drawn from some of the Columbia [...]

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Today is a pretty big day in the Tassava family: Shannon signed a contract for the book she’s written about modern stay-at-home motherhood. Some of the details are still being ironed out, but the arrangements are firm enough that we can look forward to seeing the book in print sometime in the next year or [...]

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I was busy today. How busy? So busy I didn’t have a chance to update my social-media status until after I got home. A day without a couple updates is like a day without coffee – hardly worth the trouble. In an effort to partly rectify this horrible situation, here are six status updates I [...]

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Driving back yesterday from seeing friends in Rochester, I realized that it has been a damn good week – probably one of the best “usual” weeks ever. Last Sunday was a pretty uneventful day around the house, but I got to spend some great time with the girls and enjoyed a nice 90-minute ride in [...]

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These posters are up all over campus right now. Let’s just say that I’m not exactly scared to run in the Arb at night, but that I’m carrying a pistol loaded with silver bullets.

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I had my bike tuned up yesterday, which always makes for a great ride the next day. A perfectly tuned bike is a pleasure to ride. Heading home from work this afternoon, though, my rear axle slipped ever so slightly out of alignment, which happens if it’s not remounted just right. Usually it’s not a [...]

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Following on yesterday’s post about my experience in Steve Kelly’s jazz history course, here are the best ten songs that I heard for the first time in the course. 10. Coleman Hawkins, “Body and Soul” (1939) 9. Nina Simone, “Love Me Or Leave Me” (ca. 1965) 8. Count Basie Orchestra, “One O’ Clock Jump” (1937) [...]

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A couple weeks ago, I noticed that I’d lost one of my office keys from my handy-dandy key wallet. I checked the pockets of all the pants and jackets I’d worn in the days before this annoying discovery, ransacked the box where I keep my wallet and suchlike every night, and carefully checked both my [...]

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Looking out my office window throughout the day, I often feel a pang of sadness for my bike, which sits out there all day in the cold, halfway up the snowbank that covers most of the bike rack. (I’ve anthropomorphized my belongings like this as long as I can remember: I recall introducing my G.I. [...]

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Is there any manly – or even semi-masculine – way to carry those little wire-handled takeout boxes? Have any students ever been injured after a collision caused by someone reading while walking? Have any students ever been injured after being run down by someone biking at 15mph through a crowd of pedestrians? Just how do [...]

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September was the second “30 Days of Biking” event. As I posted way back on August 31, I gave it a go, having successfully completed the first 30DoB in April. Thanks to good weather, a great bike, a wonderful commuting route, lots of excellent road riding right near the house, and the bit of incentive [...]

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