Shake, Rattle, and Roll

A little after 9:00 this morning, as I was sitting in my office, the ceiling started to shake. Now, a momentary shake isn't terribly abnormal since my office hangs over empty space above a sidewalk--"this used to be a porch," the facility people never cease to remind us--but the shaking didn't stop right away.

And then the outer wall/window started to make an odd popping sound. I'm still not sure what it was; I'm pretty sure I don't want to know, actually. A moment later, my desk started vibrating and items on my bookshelves started rattling.

My second earthquake.

I'm told that this state has more earthquakes than any other state--even California--though I don't know if this is true. But according to those who tell such tales, most aren't strong enough to be felt. This one was: somewhere between 4.3 and 5.1 on the Richter scale, they think.

Funny thing was, I wasn't afraid. There really wasn't time to be. By the time I knew how to respond to the strange shaking in my office, it was over.

At the same time, in another part of the world, Chilean miners were being rescued one-by-one from their long imprisonment underground. A couple months ago, their world shook as well. I can't begin to fathom what must have gone through their heads each day down there in the dark, especially during those first 17 days, wondering if anyone would believe they were still alive and come find them, wondering if their last breaths would be breathed in stagnant darkness.

Sweet joy of rescue. Sometimes, the shaking does end--and everyone does emerge from the depths, dirty but unscathed. I hold such days close to my heart. They are evidence that good still happens--and that there is always reason to hope.

Day Two of Cash Only

It struck me today that my little experiment isn't really going to yield the sort of results that will be meaningful. I say this because I started after I already had groceries for the week, and my car won't need to be filled up during this time, either. Also, because I am intent on observing how paying for all purchases with cash will affect my spending habits, I'm pretty sure that I am being more frugal than usual in order to really see if I can do it.

"So what's the point?" I started to wonder. "Is only using cash for the week really a meaningful experiment?"

Well, maybe scientists would fault its construction a bit, but I've decided there is still value in my experiment--if for no other reason than the fact that I am saving money. That's the point, right?

Today I skipped buying coffee and drank a bottled iced coffee that I had purchased some time back. I packed a lunch, and when I was thirsty in the afternoon, I filled my water bottle. Tonight, I cooked dinner and ate at home. No errands today, so no non-food-related desires to spend money.

I realize that some days will include necessary expenses--not all days can go as smoothly as today. But at the same time, going through a day without spending any money brings a good feeling. So far, so good.

Total money spent: $0.00.

My Battle With Budgeting

I guess you could say I received a pretty good financial education growing up. My parents taught me two very important things: (1) debt should be avoided and (2) living within a budget was not just a nice thing to do, but rather, essential.

As soon as I was old enough to start handling money, my parents taught me their budget system, which I followed to the letter for many years afterward. And then I started grad school, and reconciling my budget started taking too much time, and I stopped.

For the last few years, I haven't bothered. It's been ok. I've still spent less that I've made. I haven't gotten into financial trouble as a result of my laxity, so I haven't been too worried.

But I think maybe there is a better way to live.

I'm trying a baby-step experiment this week: I'm only paying for purchases with cash. Some people say that's a good way to save money because it forces you to be more intentional about what you spend money on. Maybe if I remind myself how good it feels to intentionally save money, I'll want to do more of it.

Today, I only spent $0.27. A good start.

Once Upon a Time, There Was a Dog...

What a great way to begin a very bad story: "Once upon a time, there was a dog."

Is this a dog story? Is it a story about a person who gets attacked by a dog? Does it have nothing at all to do with a dog, but the dog appears in the first line merely as a hook to grab the reader? There are probably so many ways you could go with that story, but I can't foresee any of them being good.

So why am I writing about a dog? Because I don't know what else to tell you.

I would rather speculate about poorly written dog stories than tell you the real things. Or maybe I want to tell you the real things, but you are Internet (with a capital The), and I can't tell whether you mean to do me harm by sharing my secrets with strangers (or worse, certain family and certain colleagues) or whether you mean to help nurture my creativity back to health by sharing the best of me with a someday-soon-to-be-adoring audience.

You are big, Internet, and so very, very open. And sometimes you frighten me.

In Which I Rant About Plagiarism...Again

I find it mildly ironic that a comment left on one of my previous posts is from someone advertising a website that writes papers (for a fee) that are guaranteed to be plagiarism-free. I find it even more ironic that the first question that crossed my mind was, "I wonder if they're hiring?"

The thing is, I am tired. Tired of all the cheating. Tired of people who claim to live by a certain moral/ethical code who then have no qualms about having someone else do their work for them, whether that be in the form of lifting information off the Internet and inserting it into a paper (which is just plain stupid) or in a more crafty form that maybe I can't even discern.

I graded some papers today from a student whom I had caught plagiarizing on another assignment previously. All the new papers went through Turnitin.com without any problems, and yet, it irked me that it felt like the student had submitted extremely well-written papers that had no major flaws but yet weren't quite what I had asked for in the assignment.

Truth be told, I asked myself the question: Is it possible that the student got someone else to write the papers? And the realization I came to was that yes, it was possible--but no, I was never going to be able to prove it.

It's things like this that make me wonder what I see in distance education, how it's possible that I could believe in it. (And I do.)

But the problem isn't the distance. God knows, students on campus cheat and/or plagiarize just as much as online students do. And God knows, the people who are determined to do it are going to find a way.

The problem is that there are so many people who care more about turning their education into a commodity than they do about actually becoming educated people. Because once education is comprised solely in a diploma, then it's an easy sequence of steps that will lead a determined individual to achieve that end.

Tragic waste, if you ask me. For all parties involved.

I Think I Have Forgotten How To Be Creative

Seems crazy, I know. But I've been away from this blog for years, really, and even in that time, there hasn't been much writing. And what little writing there has been has been, well, trite.

I can't exactly remember when I stopped writing, but I distinctly remember when I stopped caring. For so long, I have chosen to bottle up what was in me--perhaps because for a time there was nothing good (or publishable) that would come out, perhaps because I thought the best of me was gone forever.

Time doesn't change everything, but it lends distance and perspective, and for that I am grateful.

Hello, friends. I'm back.

Songs from The Pirate Queen

You see, I love musicals. So I'm always on the lookout for a new one that I might like. Of course, not living in a city like New York, I don't always catch up as quickly as I otherwise might, but I like to think that even if I'm a couple years behind in discovering a show, that's still pretty good.

Case in point: The Pirate Queen, c. 2007.

I've been casually researching this one ever since I discovered Stephanie J. Block's new album "The Place I Know," which includes a song I had never heard before but now love: "Because I am a Wife" from Alain Boubil and Claude-Michel Schonberg's The Pirate Queen. (Broadway fans of course will of course recognize this famous writing duo as the creators of both Les Miserables and Miss Saigon.)

And yet my research had led to a disheartening end. Not only did the show end quickly after a short and disappointing run on Broadway, but when the show had moved from Chicago to New York months earlier, it lost this very wonderful song that I had so recently discovered. Its replacement ("Woman") is also quite nice, but to me it lacked the power of "Because I am a Wife."

Why, I wonder, would they make such a change? Is it because in reworking the story, the song no longer fit with the plot, as was the case with Alan Mencken and Howard Ashman's "Proud of Your Boy," which was cut from the Disney film Aladdin?

Or was "Woman" truly deemed the better song?

What do you think? Or does anyone know for sure?