Subject: relatively little news
Date: Saturday, March 04, 2000 10:54
Well, relatively little news since the last update...
The big theme for the end of this week has been what to do about Bowling Green. Now while I've thought in terms of some great cosmic bargain (yes to kid, no to Ohio) life isn't actually that simple. Currently the ball is in their court. Annette was supposed to give them a decision by Friday. On Thursday night she called and said "Guess what?" They were as surprised/horrified as I was. She said that while she could have signed the contract and then popped the surprise, she wouldn't do that, and what could they offer her now that circumstances had changed? They didn't call back on Friday, so I suspect that their offer was to ring up the number two candidate, pronto. I don't think they would want to delay things a year, and Annette is NOT going to begin teaching in January. (Unless the other candidate is vastly inferior, they'd be complete idiots to continue talking to Annette.) There are other complications too - what if she defers the job and then there's an opening at Toronto? Even if they gave her a year, we might not want to take it. But this is all speculation until we hear from them again.
Meanwhile, the picture is considerably simpler on other fronts. She wasn't offered the Charlotte job and Winnipeg didn't put her on the short list. This might have had something to do with the fact that she told them that she'd received an offer from an American school - the Canadian inferiority complex at work again. From the rumour mill we learned that one of the problems at Dalhousie was the perception, among those who voted against her, that she was "too good" to stay in Canada and would surely leave in a few years. It seems that you have to take a vow of mediocrity - and poverty - to stay in your own country. This is extremely aggravating. Probably only U of T has the confidence (or arrogance) to hire the best Canadian talent without fear that it will eventually head south.
So the current thinking is that we've escaped Ohio and that if possible, we'll stay in Berlin and figure out a way for Annette to go on the market again next year, despite some logistic complications. Hopefully she can find another post-doc or grant for next year, but if not, we should be able to scrape together enough income here to live comfortably without dipping into reserves. Keine angst.
Otherwise we haven't really done much else besides wrestle with the various combinations and permutations for next year, despite the fact that our decision-making abilities have been sorely taxed by the events of the last week.
I'm puttering along with work but not really doing much because we are too disorganized to send me things I need to work on. I think I'm going to make them a deal - cut my pay in half because in these conditions, I'm only able to do about half the work we expected. I'd rather have a steady cheque that I can count on and not feel guilty about than a bigger cheque that will end in a month because they decide that they're not getting their money's worth. At this point I wouldn't miss the extra income and I'd feel better about the time I spent doing other things. As usual, I'm always angling for a way to work less. Seems like a weird thing for someone in my "predicament" to be doing, but life is too important to spend it earning money.
We have phone wires strung all over the place because we're still figuring out the new ISDN system. It's complicated, but when it's all working properly we'll save money, have faster internet access and an unimpeded second phone line. My computer has been giving me some grief lately and I think I may need to replace the CD drive. I'd actually like to drop the goddamn thing in the canal and buy a new one, but that isn't practical.
I've begun training again, thankfully. I had a crazy day Thursday. Because of various scheduling problems I committed myself to three workouts: running hills in the morning with C, which involves over ninety minutes on the bike riding to and from the Grunewald; ice speedskating for the last time this year up at Hohenschönhausen; a power-yoga class with Annette in the evening. By then end it was over four hours of workouts, and I was tired. On Friday I learned that I am not quite ready for that large a training load. My legs weren't too sore in the morning, but I was dead for the rest of the day, a complete zombie. I did nothing, just wrote a few emails between long bouts of lying in bed trying to summon the energy to do something. And I was really, really crabby with Annette, who unfortunately was crabby right back at me.
Today I feel much better and will shortly begin cleaning the kitchen. (Hopefully before Annette returns from the bookstore where she is buying something about you-know-what. Luckily it will be in German so there is no chance of my learning anything against my will. It will be much easier to preserve my ignorance here.) Then I will restore order to the rest of the apartment after yesterday's festival of sloth. Tonight we're having dinner at a nice restaurant, a thank-you from T & L, who were saved much grief and many thousands of marks by Annette finding them an apartment and day care. If the weather is good I will train - probably not, as I just noticed the snow and hail blowing against the window - otherwise I will try to get organized to work on some work-work. Tomorrow morning we're supposed to have a photo shoot for the new team, outdoors at Olympiastadion, but I'm not optimistic.
I am really, really enjoying shopping for a new bike. Oh it is fun. I should make a decision in a week or two, before leaving for Mallorca. Now is an excellent time to find deals on '99 models. I can buy a good road bike cheaper here than wholesale back in Canada, which has been a very pleasant surprise. I'm determined not to let recent events interfere with life's important pleasures.
Okay, enough of that. Time to get moving.
Regards,
Scott
Subject: Re: by way of an announcement
Date: Saturday, March 04, 2000 10:55
actually I don't think Ohio is going to happen. they probably won't hold the job for a year and we are NOT moving there in January. so I'm thinking we've escaped.
one suggestion was that we live in Ann Arbor, MI and Annette arrange to be on campus only two days a week. it's only a ninety minute drive, tops, and a much better place to live. christian preschool my ass. (Annette: "ewww. he's soooo cruel. your friends are really enjoying this.") the thing I would hate about that part of the world is that you'd spend half your life in the car, no matter what. I hate that.
It's way too early to think gender but we both have this funny inkling it will be a girl, mostly because of this odd, superstitious idea that Sarah is a still a force in our lives. a whimsical, capricious force. it doesn't make sense, of course - it's just a weird gut feeling.
I'd actually prefer that, because a self-assured, sarcastic, smart-mouth female is respected as a great advance for feminism (which I truly believe is a good thing) while a self-assured, sarcastic, smart-mouth male is just another asshole. sort of like how if a woman quits working to take care of the kids she's a brainless hausfrau, but if a guy like me does it he's the coolest thing since sliced bread. (says he who now relishes having an excuse never to set foot in an office again.)
a friend wrote last night and said to pay lots of attention to the cat when the blessed event occurs. I said not to worry, if she reacts badly that's fine with me, as it means I'll have some company when I'm hiding under the bed.
say hello to the rest of the fleet for me.
regards,
Scott
PS you'll enjoy this:
http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/2000/03/02/bushpoutine000302
Subject: Re: if wishes were horses
Date: Sunday, March 05, 2000 19:54
>Well, I have only one nagging question, which, of course, you don't
>have to answer, and that is: what kind of birth control method were
>you guys using at the time of the conception of the future Anderson?a good question - what were we doing for birth control? and the surprising answer is nothing, actually. but it's not quite as stupid as it sounds. allow me to explain.
[Sudden Python flashback - the Flying Sheep sketch - "Arr. A fair question, and one that in recent weeks has been much on my mind."]
there's this thing here called the Persona. like many interesting new forms of birth control, you don't have it in the US yet. It's a little computer, and several times a month you dip a stick in your urine and plug it into the box and it gives you a green or red light. (It's only about $100, and maybe $5/month for the test sticks.) you have to be extra careful for the first month or two while it calibrates itself, but after that it is considered to be "94% effective" if used properly (which means that in any given year, 6 women in 100 will get knocked up). the pill is 98 or 99% effective, I think.
back in the fall Annette said that she wanted to try the Persona, after not being happy with the things the pill was doing to her body. It's a common enough feeling in women her age, I gather. I agreed that it was the best thing from the perspective of her health, though I wasn't thrilled about the odds. I described it as the perfect birth control method for happily married women in their thirties who were financially secure and wanted children one day but just couldn't decide when. how right I turned out to be...
we would have bought the damn thing right away, except that first you need to be off the pill for a month (ergo, condoms/rythmn/abstinence) first, and then we were literally too broke over christmas, and then she was doing all this travelling with the interview schedule so she was never around for the beginning of her cycle. she was actually on her way out the door to buy the damn thing on Black Wednesday (after having an entirely justified paranoia attack) and thought, why waste a hundred bucks if I don't need it, and did a pregnancy test. So at least I don't have to stare angrily at the stupid thing, sitting unused on a shelf in the bedroom.
now why did I agree to this harebrained scheme, you may ask yourself. well, as you know, this issue has always been "officially unresolved" much in the manner of the Korean armistice. we looked at the numbers and decided that we should gamble, and that whoever "lost" would have to abide by the outcome. It seemed like the best way to preserve the relationship - a cunningly calculated non-decision. a 94% effectiveness rate worked out to about a 50-50 chance over the course of 8 years, I figured. which amounted to a pretty fair coin-toss, given that she's now 33.
neither of us expected to me to lose the coin toss quite so quickly, needless to say. I did try to get her on a technicality - she became pregnant before we bought the damn computer, so the game hadn't actually started, but she was having none of that (though she wasn't exactly thrilled with the timing herself).
there, I hope I've explained this rather complicated compromise.
I am surprisingly at ease with the whole thing. I have this funny feeling that if I just relax and be myself and try not to be an overweening idiot who lives for his kids, then everything will be just fine.
Regards,
Scott
Subject: bad Monday, good Tuesday
Date: Tuesday, March 07, 2000 23:18
Well I think most of you know the news by now, but I'm going to repeat it for posterity's sake: we are not moving to Ohio!! Oh thank heavens. Yesterday afternoon Bowling Green called and only offered to defer until January, an option that we had no enthusiasm for. It would have been extremely difficult in the best of circumstances, suicidal if there were any complications or difficulties. Had it been the perfect job, Annette would have said yes, but this was not the perfect job. She only waffled for a few seconds on the phone before telling them it was time to go chase down the next candidate. She remembered how depressed she was after the interview, then tried to imagine moving there in the dead of winter with a newborn. Not a pretty picture. So now we are free.
One suggestion for the future child's name was "Ohio". I prefer "Nohio", which we could pass off as Japanese.
Which reminds me of something. It was bad enough that McDonald's concocted an "oriental-style" chicken burger called the "McFu" with a slanty-eyed chicken for a logo, but in the latest ad campaign they are swapping l's for r's in German words. "Plima!" shouts the billboard. It's appalling. When he told us about this at 'tisch last week, our very funny Irish friend slapped his forehead and moaned "Fifty-five years, they've learned nothing! Jesus!"
So yesterday was crappy and today was good. I'm not really sure why. Monday morning, I woke up with a sore back from too much skating without stretching; Annette felt mildly nauseous. We were grumpy and bitchy with each other all morning. I promised to fix some computer problems this week - finish the installation and setup of the new phone/internet hookup; switch from NT to Windows 98 (not a small job) and finally get the damn network fixed so that she can print from the laptop and share the CD drive - and was not happy about the hours of drudgery this would entail. I was especially not happy about using Evil Telekom's shitty Internet software. Grump, grump, grump. Then we went to the bank and tried to move money into our German account but Herr Grouchy the Asshole Teller wouldn't do a credit card cash advance for some mysterious, Teutonic reason (burn, burn, Dresdner Bank).
So then we had fish & chips for lunch at this new place nearby, run by a German guy who lived in Britain forever and by the looks of him, ate one hell of a lot of fish & chips in his day. It was delicious but my god did we suffer. We simply cannot process grease the way we used to. I came home at three and went to bed and basically stayed in bed for the rest of the day. Annette came home from an errand-running excursion and did the same. There we lay, queasy, gassy and ewwww. I'm not complaining - it was worth it - but we were shocked by the extent of our prostration. I think we crawled out of bed at about half past seven and ate a bowl of plain rice and watched TV for the rest of the night.
Not a great day, Monday. Tuesday dawned brighter. We both felt better - no backache, no nausea. We rode up to yoga for our regular class. This does wonders for my back, and I think will really help my skating. I feel so much straighter and better aligned, and I'm growing stronger and more flexible every week. (Assuming I don't crash and kill myself, this body is going to look pretty interesting by the end of the summer. As is Annette's, but for very different reasons.) We had a sauna after and rode home in time for lunch.
The sauna is of course open to both men and women. There is only one changing room, one set of showers. You know what this means. I am slowly getting used to the fact that people of both sexes are completely naked in front of each other all the time. I don't really mind - it's neither good nor bad, necessarily - but sometimes I still feel uncomfortable. It's not so much that I suffer from a predictable adolescent nightmare, but rather I have the curious dread that as soon as I drop my drawers and walk into a room filled with naked women, they will all scream and call the police. I realize that my fears are completely irrational, that such behaviour is completely accepted here, but it's an adjustment all the same.
In the early afternoon I dashed out for an hour's ride, stopping at a couple of bike shops, then we caught the U-Bahn to IKEA. I realized that one of the (many) reasons I haven't felt like working lately is that I don't have a decent chair at the computer, and that when my back is giving me grief I can't sit still for very long. The exercise ball is great for an hour or two, but you can't spend all day on it.
I approached IKEA with a certain dread. Might it suddenly appear different, given the sudden alteration of our circumstances? Apparently not. The ball-room wasn't suddenly larger, sinister and menacing; I did not find myself drawn to the toy section or the children's furniture. (What am I worried about? I love toy stores. The big danger is that I'll spend too much time and money in them.) Other than one moment of terror when Annette spotted a very practical fold-down changing table, the IKEA experience was substantially unchanged. Perhaps we simply weren't there long enough.
Suddenly I'm less averse to buying things for the apartment. While it's not certain how long we will ultimately stay in Berlin, it is certain that we will not have to leave in August. So I might by a better mattress and a chair or sofa-bed or something like that. We should wait until the end of the academic year, when all the departing Amis sell their possessions. It's a good way to save money on last year's IKEA models.
Anyway, I found a decent chair for 99 DM, for which my back is already thanking me, and Annette bought some cushions for our uncomfortable ersatz couch and then she went to running and I came home and spent a pleasant hour under the desk cleaning up computer and telephone cables. And that was our evening.
What else? I had a great time on Sunday doing the photo shoot for the new team. We nearly froze to death standing around in thin little racing suits, as it was only a few degrees above zero with a strong wind. Not optimal weather, though at least it was dry. But once we warmed up and started skating, I remembered why I enjoy this sport so much. It's fun. It's just fun. It's simply fun. I can't really explain why it's more fun than cycling, but it is. We tore around in front of the Olympiastadion, skating circles around the photographer (photo attached) or doing long, fast loops of the parking lot. Later we drove down to the Grunewald and skated on the roads, with the photographer hanging out of a van in front of us. At the end of the day I'd probably put in a good 20 km, and I felt it. Being back on wheels after three months on the ice was a bizarre sensation - it's very different. Only eleven days until Mallorca!
That's enough for tonight. We'll be doing the usual work, workout, hang out thing for the rest of the week, I imagine. No fixed plans, nothing on the dance card. But I'm sure we'll keep ourselves busy.
Oh yeah, I'm still sane. Really quite sane. I'm sure it's just denial, though.
Regards,
Scott
