Adsense Irony

Today, I've had a really crappy day. I went to bed annoyed because I am trying to find a reasonably priced, safe, and gender neutral car seat and Target doesn't seem to want to keep any in stock or be helpful at all. So I literally spent hours researching whether or not I could use a convertible infant-toddler car seat and finally gave up and went to bed frustrated after I read numerous website/message boards which all told me I was a bad parent for thinking of skipping the infant carrier and being a parent isn't about trying to save money.*

I woke up in a bad mood and then discovered that the grad forum event that I am in charge of planning for tomorrow seems to be unraveling at lightening speed because the university email system arbitrarily eats emails. Since I didn't know what kind of mood my advisor was in and didn't think I could handle getting in trouble for anything, I sat on the couch and sobbed for a good 15 minutes while contemplating career changes.

Rather than deal with university drama, I decided that hunting down the car seat we were looking for would give me a sense of accomplishment.** Long story short, I called Target. They were rude. I asked to speak to someone else who suggested that I was overreacting and that the car seat was scheduled to be back in stock by June 1 which shouldn't be a problem since first babies are usually late.***

By the time, I wrote the weekly update for the baby blog, I had moved from overwhelmed to pissed and instead of talking about the baby's development this week, I basically vented about Target's incompetence. When I went to check my Google Reader a little while ago, this is what I saw. Please note the sponsor of today's blog post...

*Actually, I think it is about being responsible. Do I really need to spend $300 on an Eddie Bauer car seat. Wouldn't an investment in a college fund be a much more beneficial use of the money?
**Because Google can find anything right? Wrong there are some things that Google cannot make appear in stock and I do know that you aren't supposed to buy used car seats, so Ebay is out. BTW if any of you happen to see a Graco Stylus Morocco Travel System, will you please buy it. I will send you a check.
***I'll give him that I probably overreacted to the email situation this morning, but considering that I'm due May 24th (probably about to be a week sooner), I don't think it's really unreasonable to want a car seat before I have the baby, especially considering that I can't leave the hospital with the baby is we don't have one. As much fun as it would be to send Rakicy or M to the store to find one on the excitement plan, I don't think that trying to avoid that situation makes me unreasonable or irrational.

Today...

Today...

• I got rained on while biking to work and had to teach looking like a drowned rat.
• I tried to be a good teacher, but couldn't because I am working in broken chaos, so I closed my door and cried in frustration.
  
• I got stuck in my own office because my door cannot be opened from the inside.
• I was rescued by a maintenance man while a colleague sat in her office and did nothing.
  
• I got a copy of work order about the above situation; it said Priority: Low
• I read emails on the department listserv that professed to be unaware that grad students were being blown off in the move.
• I offered to help someone who's been a total b!%@# to me and when she said something rude, I apologized to her instead of telling her off.
  
• I listened to a faculty member tell the tech people they were too loud and she was "actually trying to work."
• I watched the tech people leave without installing our phones because installing them meant making noise.
• I started to send an email to someone about how frustrated I was, but didn't because I was afraid I would get in trouble.
  

MBTI and Sadomasochism

I know that the title of this post sounds intriguing, but it's really just a reflection on life the last couple of weeks.

I've been thinking about personality a lot lately. When I was an undergrad, I took the Myers-Briggs Type Instrument (take a free version here). I am an INFJ. An instructor at the time told me that INFJs make up only 1% of the total population. When I first learned this, I was convinced that I'd misread some questions despite the fact that the description of an INFJ sounds exactly like me. In my mind being an INFJ made me inferior to 99% of the population and I spent several years convinced that I could change my personality (I am now okay with this). The result=I became more of an INFJ everytime I took the test. Here's what one site says about INFJs:

People with the INFJ personality type are intense and perfectionistic. They have deep insights into many aspects of life, and usually have very high standards for their own understanding and accomplishments, as well as those of others. They are service-oriented and empathetic to other individuals. The INFJ strives for the ideal in every aspect of their life. An INFJ's feeling of success is centered around their own level of understanding and accomplishment, their usefulness or service to others, and the condition of their personal relationships.

Those who know me well know that I am frequently unsure of myself and have an intense perfectionist impulse/fear of failure. Today someone who has done quite a bit of research on MBTI was talking about how when we dislike something (in this case kinds of teaching/teachers) it's really because we see ourselves in that person. According to her (she knew my personality type already) what I really wanted was to be a ESTP:

ESTPs are outgoing, straight-shooting types. Enthusiastic and excitable, ESTPs are "doers" who live in the world of action. Blunt, straight-forward risk-takers, they are willing to plunge right into things and get their hands dirty. They live in the here-and-now, and place little importance on introspection or theory. The look at the facts of a situation, quickly decide what should be done, execute the action, and move on to the next thing.

I understand the premise that, especially in teaching, we sometimes unknowingly recreate our own experiences as students for a new generation, but I don't think that we actually want to be the opposite. I don't want to be that person I just described above, just like I don't want to be the people I dislike. In fact when I googled that this afternoon, I read it and it made me nervous. I don't think that that person is a bad person, I just don't want to be that person and I don't like being told that that is what I want. I may want other people to be more like me sometimes, but I work hard to like myself and I don't think it's healthy to tell people what they really want is to change everything about themselves.

It was also suggested in this class that we need to own our other--that thing/person that we have identified that we don't like. According to this interpretation, when we dislike something/one we are seeing part of ourselves. I'm not sure that I buy this. I've worked with people that I don't get along with--they interfere with my learning style, they make me feel more insecure, they take my voice away when I finally do speak up--and I don't think that being able to identify what I dislike in a teacher/friend/colleague is a sadomasochistic process (to borrow B's wording) of torturing myself.

I have at least one habit that I would be more likely to classify in that way (reading Pantagraph comments and knowing that they will upset me because I want people to care about others), but disliking a teacher or student is a different situation. Students don't have the option to avoid teachers for most of their lives. I need a job, so I can't simply avoid those who I dislike. I'm not engaging with them because I fear them, I'm engaging with them because I have to make a living and part of keeping a job means working with/under some people who I dislike.

This is what I need: people who talk about personality theory to recognize the complexities of personality types other than their own.

A Very Bad Lunch

Recently I found a lunch. It was a well intentioned lunch, but it did not get eaten because a very "difficult" woman demanded my car 10 days ago, and the small ice chest it was in got thrown in the trunk. I was not a fan of this person before I found the lunch, but now I'm really not a fan.

Grr!

Computer Update

Greg took the laptop apart and let it dry out completely. Thursday night while M and I watched the LOST season finale, he put it back together. In true Dharma fashion, the green power light came on but nothing else.

The verdict is still out on the hard drive. Thanks to Matt's suggestion, I went out to buy a hard drive enclosure, but Best Buy only had one and it was 4x the price of the ones I found recommended online. I don't need a padded case to carry the drive in, I just need something that will recover my data.

Since then, I added the shortcut address to Google Docs to my address book and am developing a system for backing up all (important) documents. I can live without copies of old conference programs, but I can't afford to lose my dissertation materials or grade books.

Even though we weren't planning on buying a new computer for a while, we ended up buying a new one yesterday. Just last week, I was reading an article about how much energy is wasted in the production of new computers. My laptop was definitely in need of an upgrade, but it wasn't totally useless (at least until it met the cup of Diet Dr. Pepper). Greg has my sister's old laptop, which is a very portable Dell Inspiron 300m that worked better for mobility than my paper weight of a laptop. In order to allow me to grade and write and research and stay married to someone with a computer degree we need two computers. We opted for a Dell desktop this time. Greg doesn't really have a need to take a computer with him anywhere except when we travel, so we opted to maximize the power and speed for our $ with a desktop.

The new computer will be here next week sometime, the hard drive enclosure hopefully sooner.

Alley Etiquette

We have new neighbors across the alley (in Illinois detached garages are very popular, so we have an alley that all of our street's garages, and the block behind us share). The benefit of that set up is that we don't have exhaust and chemicals from the garage coming into the house. We also have a gorgeous street view in the front because when you drive down our actual street you don't seen ugly driveways, trashcans, or garages full of junk. The downside is that it's a very narrow space that only moves one way.

Our old neighbors were not the most considerate people. They constantly blocked our driveway by parking in the alley, and frequently their kids' toys would be in the middle of the alley. When we saw the "for sale" sign, we were overjoyed. Last week the new neighbors moved in, so understandably we had a period of semi-blocked alley space. Today, however, there was a little red sedan that was parked directly behind our driveway for several hours. There was no unloading or reloading, it was just parked.

I have always been the type to write things that I would never have the courage to actually say to people. I probably should have walked across the street with the old neighbors and explained to them the issue, but I didn't. Now we have the same issue all over again. I actually wrote out a note to put under the windshield of the offending car and then chickened out. Do I walk over with a cake and say "welcome to the neighborhood, please move your car"? Do I just be the neighbor who leaves notes and never introduces herself? Do I not say anything?

We have a lovely neighborhood with very friendly people, but I really wish we could have neighbors that would understand the alley etiquette.

How to sit on my furniture

I like throw pillows, accent pillows, whatever you want to call them. I'm really unsure why people cannot sit on furniture with such pillows, however. It's really not hard...the pillow is in the corner, and you sit next to it. You don't put it on the floor, in the middle of the sofa, in another piece of furniture, or an end/coffee table. The pillow will not be hurt if you touch it. You will not be hurt if the pillow touches you. There will be plenty of room for both of you.

I've given up on the pillows on our bed because Greg gripes about them and throws them on my side of the bed, but I'm not giving up on all the pillows. I'm all about having a functional, lived in house, but I draw a line somewhere.

I don't have a ton of pillows on the furniture, and I don't feel like I'm being especially unreasonable in asking people to live with my pillows, but I'm trying to keep my life more organized and I'm done with the "it's more functional" reasoning for house decor. I wouldn't go into someone's house and take down the pictures or art work or rearrange the items on their kitchen counter, so, if you are visiting my house, please don't remove the pillows. You can wear your shoes in my house (or not). You can eat in my living room. You can help yourself to blankets. But please, stop messing with my pillows. It's not a rational pet peeve, but it seriously is getting out of control, so please indulge me and don't take the pillows off my furniture.