CastilloMania

If we have one area of dissatisfaction with our cat, it would be that we were never able to train Darwin to not sharpen her claws on the furniture. As a kitten, she would attack any piece of furniture while studiously ignoring all of the many alternatives that we provided.

Finally Emily and I decided that we would cede a wicker basket and Emily’s old chair to the cat and we would enthusiastically defend the new couches and ottoman with a spray bottle. Darwin was happy to destroy the proffered gifts but chose to consider the spray bottle as a new and exciting game – watching us as she mangled the furniture until we reached for the spray bottle, at which point she would sprint off, with her tail held high giggling all the way. (I just know she was giggling, okay?)

With our upcoming move to a new apartment, Emily and I are considering adding to our furniture collection. The problem that we found was that nothing we liked (leather, loose weave fabrics) would stand up to the cat for very long. Our hearts were heavy as we considered having to leave her in a park (OH COME ON! You actually believe that???). We didn’t know what to do.

I had heard of softpaws in the past but they seemed so dumb, like just another ridiculous excuse for ridiculous people to accessorize their pets. Finally in a fit of desperation (after finding the perfect sofa), I decided to bite the bullet and order a pack. They came in yesterday. Essentially, they’re simply a pack of vinyl plastic booties for her claws and a bottle of super glue. The theory is that we glue them to the cat’s claws and she eventually gives up trying to rip them off, makes her peace with being essentially de-clawed, and we all live happily ever after.

Applying the softpaws was surprisingly easy. I was understandably eager to try them out when I got home, but past nail-clipping experience told me to bide my time with the cat and wait until she had calmed down (we have this whole kitty-loving routine when I get home that she has to complete before she settles down for the night). Finally I couldn’t stand it any longer and tore open the pack, prepped a couple of the bits of plastic and grabbed the cat. Surprisingly she didn’t object that much with just a little bit of squirming; I had the 4 front claws of one paw done and had just slipped the 5th over her thumb-claw before she truly objected. I held her down, held the bit of plastic in place until the glue took hold and then let her go. She wandered around a bit (5-ish minutes) and would occasionally try to lick at her paws – of course I stopped her until the glue dried. After a 1/2 hour, though, she seemed to have forgotten all about them and was happily relaxing on the couch. Rinse and repeat the second paw (this time with Emily’s help). Once again, she wandered around, irritated, for 5 minutes and then settled down.

All that is to say that, thus far, the softpaws experiment is a success. Attempts to destroy the furniture have been met with the same motions but lacking the damage. I’d have to that Emily and I are sold.

Darwin still hasn’t made up her mind.

So the snow stopped Thursday around 3:00pm and I thought that I had seen the last of the snow for this round of storms. Locals report that snow like this is very unusual.

I was wrong.

It just started snowing again about an hour ago. The weathermen are warning us to expect 8 inches and 60-80 mph winds. Apparently this new weather front is one to be prepared for (which, of course, we didn’t).

The point of all this is: if you’re expecting to see us in Phoenix next week, you might want to start making your peace with our absence – we’re gonna try to make it, but there’s a good chance that we’ll be snowed in.

As I type, I’m sitting in our dining nook at the table, staring at the beauty that snow always lends to the most mundane of sights.

As you might have read, Seattle received 4-5 inches (my estimate) of snow yesterday. Before we received the brunt of this winter storm, I thought Satellites were ridiculous. Wednesday, the weather men were predicting 2-3 inches of snow. Every school district in the sound canceled classes (except Seattle U, of course). We didn’t receive a single flake of snow. The collective paranoia of Seattle worked to give kids a free day off school, in spite of any compelling reason to do so. Then yesterday happened.

Between 3:00am and 3:00pm we received that 4-5 inches that I mentioned earlier. The roads instantly iced over. What I hadn’t quite understood is that Seattle has absolutely no salt trucks or anything else to help them manage icy conditions. Not a single one. For a hilly city like Seattle, that can be crippling. All buses went into a snow-route mode where they avoided any and all hills. Fortunately, it seems that most Seattleites know to avoid the roads (at least, I didn’t witness any accidents, though I’ve heard of quite a few and you don’t have to wait *too* long before seeing a car drive by with some sort of damage). Unfortunately, the adjusted bus routes and general…crappiness…of the bus’s web site conspired to strand most commuters. (If you’re reading this and work for the county, I’d be interested in consulting to fix your piece of junk web site, please contact me – I’d be willing to offer generous rates.)

In spite of the widespread chaos, Seattle U remained open. Well…it remained open long enough for me to walk the 4 miles in to the office, get situated, and start focusing on my daily tasks. With uncanny timing, it was at that point that Father Steve threw in the towel and acquiesced to the inevitable, closing campus. So I spent another 1 1/2 hours, making my way home, just to start back into my daily workload. That’s right, my friends, even though the university shut down; even though, untold marvels of beauty laid not a yard from my nose, out the window, I had to continue to work. Ah, the tragedy! Not only that, but when the university announced that they would shut down today as well, my director tacked on a note, that we were to make progress on our projects!

All was not pain and suffering, though. At least I had natural sunlight to work by and a loving wife to prepare my coffee…

Oh…and if you’re in the mood, check out this little video put together by my pastor relating to the Seattle Snopocalypse of 2008.

Higher education is a bad field to get into these days.  Most colleges and universities are reducing costs by hiring adjunct or part-time instructors.  Adjuncts (meaning contracted workers with no benefits or job stability) teach an average of 75% of college courses at community colleges across the country.  There are full-time teaching jobs, but they are few and far between.

I’ve been teaching as an adjunct ever since I returned from Thailand.   Here in Seattle, that means I’m “part-time”.  This is a misnomer since I don’t actually work part-time.  A full-time schedule is 4 teaching hours per day and I currently teach 5 per day.  I am split between two departments:  the Basic studies department (for immigrants and refugees), and the International department (for international students).  This is a nice arrangement for me because I love working with both groups of students.  Also, here in Washington, “part-time” instructors get health and retirement benefits and decent pay, so it doesn’t hurt me much to not have a full-time position.  In Arizona, that was another story.  I had no benefits and was paid much, much less than my “full-time” counterparts for exactly the same work.

But back to Washington. The only real problem with being a part-timer is low job-stability.  If enrollment goes down, my classes are the first to get cut.  If my classes are full, but a full-time instructor’s class is empty, my class will be given to the full-timer.  There’s also a lot of stress before every quarter as the many part-time teachers scramble to get classes.  In the past, I’ve taken on too much work because I was never sure if my classes would pan out.  In Arizona, I taught a full-time schedule at ASU, but also a part-time schedule at a community college because I worried that ASU would drop me in the middle of the semester, leaving me with no job.

As I wrote earlier, full-time jobs occasionally pop up, and two of them recently opened up in the International Dept. at my community college.  The department hadn’t hired any full-time instructors for 10 years.  I submitted my application and was selected for an interview.  This was a big deal because the department received 60 applications and only interviewed 9 people.  The interview was 2 1/2 hours, followed by a 15-minute teaching demonstration.  Talk about awkward!  I had to pretend that my boss and coworkers (the interview panel) were beginning ESL students.  Anyway, that interview went really well, and I was selected for the final round of interviews.  This was an interview with the college president, the vice-president of something or other, and the dean of the International Dept. 

I didn’t end up getting the job, which is fine with me.  It was going to be hard for me to give up teaching immigrants.  Also, getting so far in the job interviews was really an honor.  That sounds stupid, I know, but in this field it really is a big deal just to be interviewed.  My boss said that the department decided to go with people who had more experience.  So hey, when they open another position 10 years from now, I should be a good applicant!

I’m not going to write long on the issue. It has been written far better than I could. I’ll simply link over to an interesting summary on some of the current thinking on the issue within Christian circles:

http://eugenecho.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/the-abortion-conversation/

I will just quickly say that I yearn for the day that all sides of the issue can come to the table with a common attitude of respect and like-mindedness towards the goal of social equality and the intent to address human suffering. Even if we can’t agree on the priority of God’s glory, we should be able to agree on that.

I’m doing an election project with one of my classes of international students (not immigrants). The students are creating their own political parties and preparing for debates. They know astonishingly little about our election. That’s not a criticism; I never really kept up with thai politics before we had that military coup. It’s just that, being election season, I was surprised that my students had never heard of john McCain. They HAD heard of Obama, but they really didn’t know anything about him.

We’ve been talking a lot about the major issues, so today I had them all take a quiz at www.whoshouldivotefor.com. It was eye-opening for many of them. Of course, everyone expected to find out that their ideas were the same as Obama’s, and most of them did. A third of the class found out that they should vote for McCain though, and the horrified looks on their faces were priceless. One of them insisted that his result was a mistake and took the test again (with the same result).

It’s just not cool to be a 20 year old college student in Seattle and not be rooting for Obama. Everyone around these kids rails against republicans so much that it’s probably easy to get the idea that all republicans are evil. Politics is so much more complicated than people make it sound.

Today I discovered a really great place to eat lunch, and it’s at my school. Seattle central has a culinary school. The students serve their creations every day in their restaurant near the cafeteria. Every Friday they have a buffet with all of their weekly specials. You buy tickets (10 tickets for $5). Each dish requires a certain number of tickets. Today I had some cod with a lemon viniagette, a salad, and tirimisu. It was great!

Saturday night Emily and I had just settled down into bed when a familiar sound met our ears – the sounds of a cat retching. Darwin had plopped down onto the floor and proceeded to empty her stomach all over the floor. We made the requisite sympathetic noises, mopped up the mess, and went back to bed. An hour later, we were woken by a repeat performance. This time, she didn’t make it off the bed before she started making the groady noises. I’m not sure if I’ve ever woken up and moved so quickly in my life! Grabbing her gently, I put her on the floor, though this time it was a non-event. Later that night, we were woken yet again to the sounds of a sick cat. This time, we were so tired that we didn’t even get up, figuring that we could deal with it in the morning. Finally she settled down, and we were able to sleep the rest of the night. Sadly, the respite wasn’t permanent. The next morning, she threw up two more times. Enough was enough, we packed up the cat and took her to an emergency clinic. After poking and prodding her a bit, the Dr decided that we should get an x-ray, just to make sure she hadn’t ingested anything bad so we left the cat and grabbed some lunch. 20 minutes later we stood, staring at these pictures, freaking out about the dark spots. As it turned out, they represent normal gastric processes, but for a while, we thought she had swallowed a fish or something! (the related question “where did she get a little fish from” didn’t seem as relevant at the time) As it turns out, there was nothing there. So…in the end, we had one night of lost sleep, church skipped, a panicked run to the vet, x-ray photos, subcutaneous hydration (replete with leaking…eww) , antacids, and anti-nausea injection. All for the low, low price of $300!

The next time I’m getting a dog

For those of you who know my family, you’re aware that my parents currently live in Italy. Well, after some badgering from other family members, they have set up a blog. Check it out, it promises to be interesting!