Time to Pause, Again@**@$#@$%$^%$&^%

Well folks, in the never-ending saga of trying to conceive through modern science, Ben and I have hit another obstacle. In order for me to complete my next in-vitro cycle before our next trip to Carnegie Hall, I had to take ten days worth of progesterone. After such a treatment I was to have started my period within two to three days. Well, when one week went by and nothing happened with Aunt Flo, I called the doctor. Needless to say, they were also concerned, and I had to go in for ultrasound and bloodwork on my birthday to see what was the matter--pregnancy, tumor, etc.

Apparently I am a super high achiever in the world of endometriosis. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, six weeks after laparoscopic surgery during which my ovaries were sucked dry of cysts, there rested on my left ovary a 6.5 cm cyst. Oh yes, that is large. It is so large that my ultrasound technician was reluctant to tell me just how large it was. Take your index finger and look at it from the knuckle to its tip, and that it how large my left ovarian cyst is. This is a bad thing because cysts feed on the drugs that are given to stimulate the ovary to produce more than one mature egg per cycle. This also means that we can't start my next in-vitro cycle. At this point I'm not even sure IF there will ever be a next cycle. Even more cruel is that I have to take birth control pills to try to shrink my left ovarian cyst. We'll see next week if this works.

We've been putting off filling out the China Adoption papers, but this will most likely kick our butts in gear. We are in the midst of Verdi Requiem week at Symphony Hall and I am preparing for a recital on March 7 at the Oglethorpe University Museum with my harpsichordist pal, Ben Carlisle. It's nice to have distractions.

Pork Ribs with Zucchini

My last day in Bloomington, which was Friday, began slowly, with a trip to Computer Connections to purchase some student licensed software.  Then I headed to the revamped College Mall, where Patricia and I were meeting for lunch.  It took me all of ten minutes to walk through the mall, and frankly, things haven’t really changed.  Even though Lazarus (the lowest rung of the Rich’s ladder), JC Penney’s, and some hideous movie theaters are now gone, the mall continues to feel rather white-trashy.  Oh well.  TGI Friday’s is the newest eatery addition, and it was decent food.  I avoided the library for a few more hours by checking into Econo Lodge off South Walnut and visiting David and Stephen’s new store, The Inner Chef.  It’s a beautiful shop, with inventive merchandising and an uncluttered ambiance that feels that the shop owners have chosen items that you should have in your kitchen and home.  They sell kitchenware with a sense of design, full of items that function as practical gadgets and decorative elements all at once.  I loved the store.  David Wade is an amazing designer, and in fact some of the most inventive stage designs I’ve ever seen have come from this man.  If you’re ever in Bloomington, go visit the store.  Talking with David filled me with a different kind of admiration for him.  The store opened in August of 2005, and in the fall a teenager stole a rainbow flag that was flying in front of the store and burned it.  The child was caught, prosecuted, and punished.  In the mean time, this hate crime was covered rather extensively by the print and television press in Bloomington and Indianapolis.  Rather than shying away from this publicity, David became more of an activist.  He faced protestors from a local Baptist Church with grace, and continues to use the store as a beacon of light for those who are gay, lesbian, or bi-sexual (in addition to offering gorgeous stuff).  The rainbow flag is proudly hung, and the ad campaign for the store is “Outing your inner chef.”  I am proud to call him and Stephen friends.

Then came some very rewarding hours in the library, and the pièce de résistance, La Torre.  Ben and I’s obsession with La Torre’s Pork Ribs with Zucchini goes back nearly ten years now, when we moved to Bloomington.  It is full of delectable chunks of pork spare ribs stewed with onions, tomatoes, and zucchinis, topped with yummy Mexican cheese.  It’s so good that Papa Pete still asks about it, and we’ll be bringing the entire family there when I finally graduate.   We became such faithful patrons of this restaurant (ordering only this one dish) that they would rush orders of Pork Ribs with Zucchini to the kitchen as soon as we walked in the door.  Also, we have searched high and low in Atlanta for this dish to no avail.  Well, tonight appeared to be a bust when I sat down at the table, and Pork Ribs with Zucchini was not on the menu.  I sat and fretted for several minutes, with heart racing worrying that I’ll have to disappoint Ben.  I could not imagine having to tell him that they no longer made it, and that I would not be able to bring a serving back home to him.  Fear not friends, when the waitress came back to the table, I began to gingerly and with great detail tell her about the fact that years ago, when we lived in Bloomington, we once love d this dish, Pork Ribs with Zucchini.  Before I could finish the story, she sounded the name of the dish along with me, relieving my worst fears.  She knew what the dish was, and she was going to get it for me.  Elated, I called Ben to report that all was well.  I had to wait about twenty minutes for it to reach the table because no one had ordered it in a while (the owner informed me of this when he brought the dish to me), but that was fine with me.  I knew that it would live up to all my expectations, and I was nursing a margarita which was smoothing my feathers quite nicely.  As I walked up to the register to pay, I struck up a conversation with the owners.  They both had thought that I looked familiar, but could not place my face.  Well, I reminded them of our former glorious tenure as the most voracious consumers of their Pork Ribs with Zucchini, and they both said, “that’s why we remember you!”  As the next logical step, I sweetly asked if I could have the recipe because we were unable to find this yummy concoction in Atlanta, and the husband replied, “Yes.”  My heart was pounding as I realized that our dream was coming true.  I sat down across from him, and listened to him recount the secret recipe.  As he finished describing the various procedures and ingredients, I said that if I can’t get it right, we’ll return this summer and ask more questions.  To my delight and amazement, he replied that if we had more questions we could just go in the kitchen and he would show me.  I stashed an extra order of ribs in the trunk to take home to Ben, and it froze nicely for the trip back on Saturday.  Yes, I did write the recipe down.  I would repeat it here, but it would cost ya.  So, you’ll just have to come over for a taste of our Pork Ribs with Zucchini alla La Torre.

It was the perfect end to my journey.  I have found myself again.  Remembering Bloomington has brought me back to my core—a musician.  I’ve been talking the talk for a while, but now I can walk the walk again.  It’s a feeling of exhilaration and contentment, and I can’t wait to perform my lecture recital and finish the doctorate.  This was a very good week.

Whoa! It's Good to Be Home?

I drove into Bloomington yesterday at around 3pm, and it has been a mind-blowing experience since the first moment. Ben could not come with me because of a very heavy work load, and I find myself really freaking out due to his absence. Needless to say, I plan to come back this summer with him. You see, I finished my doctoral exams more than three years ago, and I’ve been focused on performing, public radio, and baby-making hell since that time (but not necessarily in that order). Looking back, I wanted to put academe on the back-burner, but I never thought that it would be for this long. As we creep closer to the tenth anniversary of us moving to Bloomington, I realized that I needed to finish this thing. So, this is my effort to reacquaint myself with the grad student that I left behind. It’s a bit unusual, but I know myself well enough to know that it’s a frame of mind that I must reestablish.

The hotel of my stay thus far has been the Indiana Memorial Union Hotel, right inside the student union. This gigantic building also houses a bowling alley, gaming room, and much more that I’ve never seen. Once I checked in, I took off for the Jacobs School of Music. After checking out my teacher’s schedule, I headed across the street to the T.I.S. Bookstore. One of my last part-time jobs in Bloomington was working at the T.I.S. Music Store, which was the greatest most of all because I got to work with Phillip, Ben and I’s younger brother. Okay, I also bought a ton of sheet music, and I’m not so sure that I really actually earned money from this job. I think at best I broke even. Anyway, I saw Patricia, and we are going to have lunch tomorrow and catch up. When I returned to the hotel room, I took inventory of my purse and discovered that I had lost my keys. Panic attack ensued as I began calling the various places that I had visited in my first four hours back in Bloomington. After calling some lowly-paid clerk at T.I.S. and running down to the I.U. Bookstore to check if I had left my keys there, I was at my wits end. Then I called my sweetest Ben, who talked me through my day and making sure that I check every place. I then checked the car—no luck, and finally went to the hotel desk, and lo and behold, it was there. A huge sigh of relief later, I retired to the room, and chilled out for the night.

This morning I took off for WFIU at around 11am and began my surreal day. Actually, from the first moment I set foot onto Bloomington soil, it felt like home, except I know that is has not been my home for quite a long time. I keep wishing that Bloomington was a suburb of Atlanta, then, I’d have the best of both worlds. Many of the usual suspects were there, and it was fantastic to talk to them all (some of whom remembered me quite well, and one who thought I ran for city council?). Then I took off for T.I.S. Music before heading, finally, to the library. (I know this near blow-by-blow is a bit tedious, but this way I’ll remember everything) Stephen and Christopher were both there, and so little has changed. After chatting a while and catching up, I had some vittles at Dragon Express. Such fond memories of dumplings and Egg Foo Young (I know it’s an American invention, but they do it so well.) drove me to order an egg roll and pot stickers. As I wiped the grease from my lips I headed to the library. Three hours later and nearly falling asleep twice, I hung at T.I.S. some more and finally headed back to the hotel. Let me tell you that today has been a most unusual day weather-wise. Highs were in the mid-60s, and there has been clouds and occasional sprinkles (this isn’t unusual), all day.

I decided to drive around a bit tonight, and it is a marvel how little things change. Despite new apartments downtown and the addition of Best Buys, most things look and more importantly, feel the same. I kept expecting to see Katie or Phillip around campus, and it was so depressing to realize that that would not be possible. It will be sad to leave this place on Saturday. I never thought I’d say that. I can’t believe the feeling of nostalgia that washed over me. While I’ve not made monumental progress this trip, mentally I feel more attached to this place than I have in a long time. It’s time for me to finish what I’ve started so long ago, and become Dr. Wanda.

The Magic Touch, Part II

In what has to be one of the funniest confluences of events in blog publishing history, the post about my talent for causing electronic shit to break got eaten by the blogger database, ne'er to be seen again. So, while the post was published to a file which was visible on the site, to the blogger system it wasn't there at all. I couldn't edit it, and none of you could post comments to it - all requests to touch that entry in any way were met by the system with the moral equivalent of "Whatchoo talkin' 'bout Willis?"

I didn't do anything, I swear it.

Shortly after I contacted Blogger's helpdesk equivalent, the post disappeared completely. I suppose that was one way to approach the problem - if the computer says there's no post then obviously there's no post, pay no attention to that verbiage behind the curtain. Luckily, I had a copy of the post in my browser cache, so I was able to re-create it verbatim. With luck, this post will remain safely un-eaten, if hopefully well - read...

The Magic Touch

There's a famous Temkoian family myth about how I'm death on electronics. My dad got a new TV once that had this little control panel which recessed into the front face. In order to access it, you pushed a little button that had a little label on it that said, cleverly enough, "push", and the little panel came sliding out of the front - very slick when it worked.

The delivery guys came to install the TV, and the first thing I did when they left was to push the little button that said "push". The panel slid out. "Cool!" I said, and pushed it back in. It slid back out. I pushed it in. It slid out. The button was not involved. "Um." I said. At this point, dad walked into the room.

After everyone in the family went through the drill - push it in, watch it slide out, push it in, watch it slide out, lather, rinse, repeat - it was decided that I was very thoroughly at fault and was never to touch the tv or anything else again for the rest of my life. Alas, I did not heed this advice, much to the dismay of electronic equipment everywhere. There's nothing quite like pushing a play button on a tape recorder and hearing that special "crunch" noise which signifies that something has gone contrary to design. My past is littered with the corpses of broken electronica, their only crime to be used by me for their intended purpose.

During my college years I developed an alarming ability to crash any computer system I came into contact with. To me, this signified an obvious calling to the Computer Sciences. I spent the majority of my college career bring the Emory University CS labs (all of them) to a screeching halt. Things got worse when I starting to learn Distributed Computing, a science concerning the breaking up of huge problems into lots of smaller ones and figuring out how to get the load shared out amongst many systems, and the myriad problems one encounters when one wants to do something insane like this. I went from killing one machine at a time to killing off the entire lab in one fell swoop.

In fact, my area of study or work seems to determine the type of object I am most likely to kill. After school it was the Municpal Electric Authority of Georgia, where I applied my digicidal skills to the power grid, bringing down more than one remote telemetry unit by attempting to push the controlling software in strange directions. After that it was working as Emory University's webmaster when I learned how to bring down www.emory.edu simply by upgrading the hardware and software running the web site. At Indiana University I speciailzed in installing and maintaining (and eventually contributing to) a distributed computing software project called Globus, which at the time was a sure way to slowly kill any system onto which it latched. From there to Cox Radio Interactive, where I discoverd my talent for breaking radio broadcasting platforms by simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time and accidentally "jiggling" a wire which was known by local engineers to be "goosey" but which was neither advertised nor protected in any way.

Now I work for Verizon Wireless. Apparantly my new skill is causing grief with other people's phones simply by calling them to talk.

Sorry about your phone, Megan!