Golf Cart Driving from Christopher Tassava on Vimeo.

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, both girls starting school, my wife writing a book, et cetera. Around all of those milestones, I’ve been able to get up every day and look forward to doing my job at a great college full of excellent people. (Except that one guy.) Reflecting on the past dix years, I’m kind of astounded at the sorts of work-related things I’ve willingly embraced, such as

• writing National Science Foundation budgets
• calling people up instead of sending them email messages
• running the campus United Way drive
• researching the history of family foundations in Minnesota
• eating lunch outdoors without feeling (very) guilty
• convening meetings
• reviewing human-subjects research cases
• serving on the College’s budget committee

Six and one-twelfths years ago, I couldn’t have imagined doing this stuff, or even being a place in my professional life where I’d want to do them. Not to say “dream job,” but…

I can’t say the conditions were optimal: at 12:30, just before we went out into the field, the temperature was 95.9°F and the heat index was 118°F. Nancy recommended working slowly, standing in the shade as much as possible, and drinking a lot of water. Honestly, I was looking forward to the challenge of being outside in that heat as much as the opportunity to learn a little about counting trees. And I couldn’t complain much: my coworker/trainer had spent all morning outside in similar conditions, and she was still up for an afternoon’s work!

So we headed out, clad in heavy pants, long-sleeve shirts, socks, hiking boots, and hats. We were completely soaked in sweat after 30 minutes of tromping through our section of the Arb. Perspiration aside, the work was fairly simple, if messy: we set up a long 100-meter line (a “transect” in tree-countingese) through the trees and underbrush, then established shorter, 25-meter lines every 25 meters to create a series of quadrants. This is what that looked like. See my coworker’s shirt off in the distance? Yeah, me neither.

In each quadrant, we looked for certain types of invasive species and measured a few of the trees in that quadrant. Well, my coworker did that stuff – I just wrote down the information on some neat water(sweat)proof paper. The section included few trees of any size, most of which were red oaks planted in 1997. I can now reliably identify red oak, Quercus rubra or, as tree counters call it, QURU. Did you know that there’s a whole system of USDA letter codes to identify plants? Shut up: unless you’re Dan Hernandez, you didn’t.

All told, we spent a little over two hours on the four sets of quadrants, which seemed like a good pace. I felt much better at the end of that period than I had after the first 30 minutes, when I was sweating, as they say, profusely, and my heart was beating at the same pace as a slow run. After a half hour or so, my body adjusted, somewhat, and the sweating slowed down to a rate that would have been ridiculous under normal conditions but was probably pretty normal for these ridiculous conditions. All in all, I’m eager to get back out there next Tuesday. I just hope it’s more like Rice County summer, and not Rio de Janeiro summer.

A view from our turboprop flight from Seattle to Walla Walla: circular fields irrigated by water drawn from some of the Columbia River’s tributaries. This shot doesn’t do justice to the oddity of perfect circles stretching as far as I could see.

The Marcus Whitman Hotel, the tallest building in Walla Walla and a very, very nice place to stay.

One of the numerous very cool pieces of public art on the Whitman campus:

Another, different sort of public art at Whitman:

The gorgeous little pond at the Forgotten Hills vineyard of Waters Winery, where we enjoyed a great outdoor dinner (among other activities):

One of the banquet tables. Yes, it was this gorgeous: 75 degrees F, dry, sunny, still…

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 so.

This accomplishment of Shannon’s is the culmination of years of very hard work, and I think I’ve only been more proud of my wife three other times in our 16-plus years together: when she gave me my daughters and when she finished her PhD. And that’s not to say that Shannon hasn’t done a lot of other amazing stuff – only that this book contract is up there with the very biggest deals.

If nothing else, I think that realizing this goal has required more work over a longer time than anything else Shannon’s ever done. I’ve known that she wanted to be a “writer” for as long as I’ve known her; I remember her telling me when we were first going out that she wanted to write for a living. Unlike the many liberal-arts grads who say that but don’t act on it, Shannon did.

True, her dream was mostly dormant during the years of going to grad school and starting a career, but it reemerged when Shannon began her second career as a stay-at-home mother, during which she discovered that she had something unique to say about the trials and rewards of that job. She started blogging, published essays in a couple of edited anthologies, worked incessantly on her own book, and strived to find a way to get the book published.

This last task was – is – the hardest one. Shannon ran into roughly one million dead ends (the modern publishing industry is a horrible place), but she never gave up, and finally it’s paid off: her book is going to be published! Julia and Genevieve couldn’t be happier for her, in their kid-enthusiastic way. Little do they know that they’re absorbing many important lessons from their mother’s perseverance and tirelessness.

For my part, I couldn’t be more proud. Congratulations, babe! When can we pop that bottle of Champagne?

• 7:45 a.m. Two parent geese were bookending a row of goslings at the pond this morning. All were staring into the water. I think the parents were getting the kids psyched up to swim.
• 10:10 a.m. Getting in even 15 minutes early has a huge payoff: I’ve done a ridiculous amount of work in the last 2.5 hours.
• 11:55 p.m. The gendered divergence in students’ clothing is very pronounced these days. Many women look like their going to work, or at least to a nice party. Most men look like their going to sleep under a boxcar.
• 12:30 p.m. I’m at the annual lunch thrown by the College for our non-profit community partners. It’s a great event, and this year’s speakers were excellent – a 3rd grade teacher at Julia’s elementary school and a Carl who’s tutored in her room for three years.
• 2:45 p.m. The barefoot cult at Carleton is getting out of hand: libraries and bathrooms should be footwear-mandatory zones.
• 4:50 p.m. Someone parks a sweet 1980s Raleigh road bike outside the art building every day. Chrome and yellow-orange. WANT.

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 sunshine that has been rare this spring. And I also played perhaps too much with my new iPhone, which is just as amazing as I’d hoped.

On arriving at work on Monday, I found an email message revealing that a very worthy junior faculty member had been recommended for a major grant, one we’d worked very hard to assemble last fall. Though we spent much of the week finalizing various details, the grant award should now come through pretty soon, which will be very satisfying to see.

Feeling pretty happy on Monday, I had lunch outside in a picturesque spot on campus and finished Steven Johnson’s remarkable book Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, which is part intellectual history, part how-to for thinking better, and entirely inspiring. I’m already thinking of ways to start practicing some of the ideas he describes. And I was surprised to get a text, of all things, from my wife, of all people.

Tuesday, my work email brought another good message, this one regarding the award of a very prestigious and hard-to-get grant to another worthy junior faculty member. Great in its own right, this news got even better later in the week when we engineered a way for him to both accept this grant and a smaller but equally important grant he had already received – effectively giving him 15 months of funding to work on his current project, not 3. Again, very satisfying.

Tuesday night, on a whim I watched the first half of the excellent French biopic/crime thriller Mesrine, which blew me away. I watched the second half on Wednesday and Thursday nights, and found the whole movie to be an exceptional piece of work that anyone who likes crime movies should see.

Wednesday morning was spent on a United Way allocation panel, helping divvy up the local UW’s campaign funds to various area organizations. It was equally rewarding (giving away money!) and frustrating (giving away too little money), but definitely confirmed my eagerness to help run the College’s United Way campaign again next fall.

Thursday was divided into a rush-rush morning at work, getting all kinds of stuff done, and a tough but fun four-hour bike ride in the afternoon – my hardest ride yet this year, and a key session on the way to the Almanzo 100 race on May 14 – two weeks from today. Conditions were borderline terrible, which only made the 240 minutes in the saddle that much better.

Even given the quality of previous five days, I had high expectations for Friday, and I wasn’t disappointed. I spent all morning at the Minnesota Zoo, chaperoning Julia’s first-grade field trip. I spent pretty much the whole time with Julia and her hilarious best friend, which was absolutely great. After a week of rain and gray, we actually had good weather, and we took advantage, hitting all of the zoo’s high points and enjoying each other’s company.

After a couple quick hours at work that afternoon, I collected both girls at home and went to a great art fair at the Northfield High School, where we had pizza and circulated among the amazing arts and crafts stations set up all over the school. We made a bunch of art, tried out some musical instruments (Julia liked the cello, Vivi – unsurprisingly – liked the drums), and people-watched. Separately, each girl shyly pointed out a high-school age boy that she thought was “handsome” – funny and mildly shocking.

Then finally, today, we went to Rochester to visit with friends there. The girls enjoyed the trip and the visit, and we got back in time for me to sneak in a short ride while Shannon and the girls assembled May baskets to distribute to friends on Sunday. The day was capped with a good dinner, a beer, and a video. I know they can’t all be this good, but it’s nice to have an such a good one every now and then.

Bike Crash

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 big deal: I just stop carefully, open the quick release, set the wheel back into the exact right spot, close the QR, and head off.

Usually. This time, though, the axle popped out as I was riding through the busiest downtown intersection. I hit the brakes and aimed for the nearest curb, popping my left foot out of my pedal. Unfortunately, the mis-mounted wheel was making me lean right, and I could not get that foot free before tipping over sideways, right in front of Bridge Square, which is full – at 4:45 p.m. on sunny spring days – of loafing teenagers. I’m pretty sure their cheers were ironic.