Happy New Year's Eve!

For my Christmas present to my mother this year, I took all our old home movies and edited them into one DVD (thanks, iMovie!). There were about 25 hours of footage and it took forever to get it down to 45 minutes of interesting things, but it was totally worth it because amidst the hours and hours (and hours and hours) of me and my sister as babies just lying on the ground and drooling, there was the occasional gem like this:



Yes, that is my parents giving me beer when I'm less than a year old. My favorite part is the face I make right after I take the second sip. Anyway, I figured this clip was most appropriate to the holiday since people like to drink on New Year's Eve - happy end of 2010, everyone!

Dumpling UPDATE

Right after I posted those pictures, I got an email from Tim's mom with the subject line "Dumplings Certificate for you." It contained this awesome creation:

 (Original pdf here)

According to google translator, it says:

Certificate

Students: Ben and Caroline

Won the junior class Dumpling Certification

Achievements of Qualified Graduate Student

President: Caroline       Vice President: Ben

Dec. 26, 2010 Hyde Park, Chicago

Certificate Number: 000000020101226

I am very proud of the fact that I am president to Ben's vice president. I am definitely going to print this out and hang it up in my cube at work!

Dumplings!

We went to Chicago to be with Ben's family for the first half of break, and while there we went to his friend Tim's house to learn how to make dumplings!

Actually, we didn't really learn to make dumplings so much as we watched Tim and his mom make perfect dumplings while we mauled everything we touched.

In the space of time it took Ben and I to carefully form one hideously lumpy dumpling that fell apart as soon as we set it down, Tim and his mom could each turn out like 20 beautiful ones. After much effort, Ben was able to at least roll out a somewhat decent wrapper:

Despite our incompetence we were eventually able to produce a steaming plate full of intact dumplings, but at that point we were too busy gorging ourselves to take more pictures. They were insanely delicious and Ben and I have grand plans to make them ourselves at home, so stay tuned for a post wherein we destroy our entire kitchen and cover ourselves in dough in a misguided dumpling quest!

Best Chrismtas present ever!

Look what my mom made me!

I hope I never have to kill and eat her to survive...

My Big Break

A few days ago I got this email:

Dear Ms. Rubin:

Pearson Education is preparing the following title for publication:

Title: Writing in the Disciplines: A Reader and Rhetoric for Academic Writers, 7th ed.
Author(s): Mary Kennedy, William J Kennedy
Publication Date: 7/15/2011
Number of Pages: 640
Estimated First Printing: 4370
Proposed Price: $57.00

We request non-exclusive rights to include the selection(s) listed at the bottom of this letter in the format specified.

Sincerely,
W. Hall
Permissions Researcher

Selection(s) Requested:
Caroline Rubin, "The Gendered Language of Gamete 'Donation." (text only). Kampf Prize essay, MIT Program in Women's & Gender Studies.

After checking with the MIT Women's Studies Department and the Professor I wrote that essay for, it seems that this is legit. I guess the editors of this textbook somehow found the essay I wrote that won the Kamp prize in 2008, and for whatever reason want to include it in the newest edition. So basically, I am getting published despite never having submitted anything, which I'm sure means that I am just famous and wonderful in every way. Or something like that.

Anyway, I emailed the guy and asked if I could get a copy of the book for granting my permission ($57 is a lot, even if it's for tangible proof of my awesomeness) and he said no problem. So come July 15, expect an entry with a photo of my name in a table of contents!

Cubism

I had my camera at work today for something random, and thought since I posted pictures of my classroom for the last two years, I should post some pictures of my current workplace.

My cube!

My cube makes me so happy, because it is the first time I have had my own desk as a working adult. Plus, it is climate-controlled and has lots of drawers and is surrounded by people I like. I also have lots of pictures and decorations up:

Check out my electronic "Manny the Menorah"

My favorite decoration was made for me by my cube neighbor. I am in charge of sending out multiple weekly email "blasts" - one to all our teachers, another to our staff - and so I am frequently muttering and complaining about blast-related issues. To make me feel better about all the time I spend blasting, he made me this poster:

Apparently this is a real video game (not including the part about me).

Also, since I am basically the team Mom, the outside of my cube has lots of things on it for people to pick up:

This way I get to pretend I am very popular because people are always coming over to get things they need.

I think I am the only person in the world who genuinely loves their cubicle.

Seen on the Bus

You guys, I saw this on the bus yesterday and could not believe it was real:

Sorry it's off-center, there was a Scary Bus Man sitting in front of it so I couldn't get too close.

I thought it must be a prank or something, but I just checked and Justin-Bieber-law.com is real! I wonder if this Justin Bieber was just a regular lawyer until Other Justin Bieber became famous and Attorney Justin Bieber decided to capitalize on the name, or if Attorney Justin Bieber actually changed his name to steal Famous Justin Bieber's thunder, or if it really is just a giant coincidence. I kind of want to call Attorney Justin Bieber's number and ask about it, but I'm afraid he'll yell at me.

Gingerbread Champion

My manager and I are both very competitive, and we both love Harry Potter, so when a friend from work invited us to a gingerbread house decorating contest it could only end one way:

Quidditch!

So technically the only gingerbread is holding up the stands, but I think it still counts. The people are teddy grahams, the capes are cut up fruit roll-ups, the brooms are pretzel sticks and chocolate twizzlers tied together with gold twist-ties, the bludgers are red hard candies, the quaffle is a mini-marshmallow, and the snitch is a dollop of gold icing. We spent a lot of time planning this.

We are the gingerbread champions!

Fancy Pants

Tonight I got to go to a TFA fundraising dinner for work, and all I knew about its location ahead of time was that it was in "the Navy Yard," whatever that means. It turns out that means awesome, because the Navy Yard is where the Navy used to build battleships, but now companies get lots of tax breaks to move their headquarters there and fix up the space. This event was in "URBN," the headquarters of the Urban Outfitters/Anthropologie/Free People brand, which spans several buildings (although we were only in one) and is probably the coolest place I have ever been or will ever be. I didn't think to bring my camera, so all I could get was some low resolution cell phone pictures, but I think they still convey how hip it was:

Fancy sitting area.

A pile of giant chains, of course.

Aqua Buddha? You can sort of see some of a workshop area in the background.

This vase was taller than me, and wearing a knit sweater.

I think this is their Christmas decorations.

Some trendy umbrellas. The bright lanterns are hanging off of old struts, which I guess had some involvement with boat manufacturing.

I have no idea what these machines do. Maybe they make the skinny jeans.

Magic twinkle lights!

I found a neat article about the renovation, which I would recommend checking out if only for the pictures!

First Condo Meeting

Tonight was the annual condo association meeting, and for some reason I was oddly excited to go. I thought it would be fun to meet other people and learn a little bit about how the building runs, but it turns out groups of people meeting to decide things is never fun.

First danger sign: I was the only person there under 60 - apparently all the young, working people in the building know not to bother showing up at these things. As a result all the attendees are the retired people, who aren't exactly in a hurry to get stuff done.

Second danger sign: There were three candidates running for three spots on the board, and we still had to vote on them. Oy.

Third problem: The budget for next year is slightly (3.5%) higher than this year, but because there was a bunch of money saved up in the reserves, the monthly fee we pay will actually be lowered. What's not to like about paying less money? Plenty, apparently. People were so confused about paying less for a higher budget, and upset that we didn't get copies of the line item budget, that they made the building manager go back to his office and print them out.

Next problem: The big building project for next year is to redo the hallways, since they have been the same since the building was built in the 1970s, and are kind of dark and dingy. Tonight they introduced the architect from the firm that will be designing the new hallways, and the goal was just to tell people that by next summer he'll have drawn up sketches we can vote on. Instead, there was a full 30 minutes of people getting up and sharing their opinions about hallways - ranging from, "I was in a building once and they had really lovely red hallways" to "why can't each floor have its own theme?" to one gentleman's impassioned speech against the "disturbing homogenization" of hallways across America. I felt really bad for that architect.

I finally gave up and left over an hour into the meeting, since by that point I was starving and the conversation had moved on to an argument about hallway temperature between the residents of the top floors ("they're far too hot!") and those on the bottom floors ("they are freezing!").

As far as I know, the meeting is still going on. I think this will be my first and last experience with attending.

Meeting My Hero, and Miscellanea

One of my personal heroes is Doug Lemov, founder of the Uncommon Schools charter network that I am so obsessed with (the one that made me cry when I visited it as a first year teacher). So I was beyond thrilled when I found out that he was coming to Philadelphia to lead our first year corps members in a session on classroom management yesterday. I didn't actually get to see the session because I had to be outside doing boring administrative stuff, but afterward I got to actually interact with him for a full thirty seconds! I told him about visiting his school and it transforming my beliefs about what was possible for my students, and he thanked me for sharing with him - he said it was the most rewarding part of his job! My friend took a picture with my cell phone, and it motivated me to figure out how to get pictures off that thing for the first time ever:

You can only see Doug Lemov's back, but you can totally tell how awesome he is.

Also, now that I know how to get pictures off my cell phone, here are some random interesting pictures from the past year:

This was in the bird room at the Camden Aquarium, where we went for our staff retreat.

Our old carpet floor with our new wood one, when it was still in boxes.

I saw these at a random gas station once, but was too weirded out to try them.

My sister gave us a chicken from the farm she worked at, and Ben was very proud of himself for roasting it.

When Ben and I first moved in together, I couldn't resist the temptation of putting on all of our class rings and giving myself Brass Rat Knuckles.

26 Days

Remember when I said that I saw a throw pillow on 30 Rock that I wanted, and wondered how long it would be until I could buy it somewhere?

Since then I've been watching alchemy requests for that very pillow pop up on Etsy for increasing amounts - $40, $40,  $75 - but it wasn't until today that I finally saw it listed in a shop ($45 + $10 shipping). From the day the episode aired (November 4) to the day the pillow was listed for sale (today) was 26 days - not bad!

Now the question is, can I really justify spending $55 on a joke pillow...

Something To Be Thankful For

My favorite part about coming home for holidays, besides seeing my friends and family of course, is finding out about high school assholes who are already on the long decline from their adolescent peak. Past delightful information has included the jock who couldn't get into med school and now lives in his parents' basement, another jock who got into TFA in Baltimore and quit after a month (who's hard core now??), and the mean girl who got really, really fat.

Anyway, last night I went to a local restaurant with my friends, none of whom are living in their parents' basements, and was absolutely thrilled to see another high school athlete waiting tables there. Not only that, but he had gained a lot of weight, and later facebook snooping yielded that he failed out of college and is once more living at home. That will teach him for being an asshole to me in middle school.

I love delayed gratification.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Since my actual Thanksgiving plans involve seeing Harry Potter 7 again and eating Boston Market, let's pretend this photo (from my Dad's birthday last weekend) is my family's Thanksgiving dinner:

This group includes Ben, me, my sister, my parents, two aunts, two uncles, two cousins, a cousin-in-law, three cousins once removed, two cousins once removed-in-law, two second cousins, and a great aunt.

Now that Ben and I live in Philadelphia, we are conveniently located right next to my father's rather large extended family. It's sort of like My Big Fat Russian Wedding, except instead of a wedding there were two birthdays, an engagement, and a new pregnancy (twins!) to celebrate. Plus, Ben and I somehow ended up going home with all the leftovers. I never want to leave Philly!

Harry Potter Mania!

Sorry for the lack of posts all week, some friends from work and I decided that we needed to buckle down and do some serious prepping for the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows today. Starting on Saturday we watched one HP movie a day, each over dinner at a different person's house, culminating in the midnight premier of HP7 last night (this morning?). It was really fun to visit everyone's homes, and interesting to see the differences in how and what each person made for dinner, as well as how they obtained and showed their movie: one person owns them all already, one person got theirs from Netflix, one person has fancy on-demand TV, one person downloaded theirs and used a projector to show it on the wall...guess which one I was!

The midnight premier was SO AWESOME!! I don't want to write about the movie itself because I don't know if people have seen it yet or are planning to, but I think I might die from having to wait until 2011 to see the finale. We didn't get home until 3 am and I was pretty sleepy at work all day, but really my only regret is that I didn't have a cape to wear.

Look what finally came!

And it's not even on tracing paper, although it is a little creased.

It only took six months to get here and they paid me a surprise $3000 for the inconvenience, so I have no complaints :)

The Perfect Commute

I live six blocks west and five blocks south of where I work, and after months of zig-zagging through all the possible combinations of streets and sidestreets, I believe I have finally found the perfect commute.

I live on Mural Mile, so I get to see a lot of cool murals no matter how I choose to walk. But I like to start by walking past one that is still in progress:

I am really enjoying watching it grow a little bit every day; I think I'm going to be kind of depressed when it is finally finished.

Next I cut through what is the quaintest and most adorable alley in the history of alleys:

Those are cobblestones!

Look at that ivy!

That conveniently puts me by a fancy wedding dress store, where I ogle the merchandise for awhile:

After that I cut through the campus of Jefferson University Medical School + Hospital, which is fun because I really love hospitals (my dad is a doctor, so going to the hospital as a kid always meant getting to eat frozen yogurt from the cafeteria and look at the new babies). In the morning it's usually bustling with people in scrubs and lab coats, although that isn't really reflected in this kind of sad picture:

The last fun thing I pass before arriving at work is a Ross in what used to be a fancy department store, whose founders thought its free hat-trimming policy was important enough to carve it into the building:

"HATS TRIMMED FREE OF CHARGE"

After a productive day at work, I head home. First I walk past Dog School, which as far as I can tell is just day care for dogs. There are always a bunch of cute ones in the window, and they wag their tails and bark at you as you walk by.

In this picture the dogs are lying down in the window, which is why you can't really see them.

Then I walk past a day care for humans, which has even more adorable occupants. But I thought I would look suspicious taking pictures of the windows when kids were actually in there, so I waited until a day when I came home late to take a picture of the empty classrooms:

When I usually come home this room is filled with adorable toddlers playing.

This one is full of sleeping babies, and it's hard not to try and break in.

Next I go by my favorite restaurant, and since I was smart enough to stock up on their Halloween frosty coupon books last month, I can stop in for a free junior frosty whenever the mood strikes me (which is often):

Last but not least, I walk through the furniture at Uhuru Furniture and Collectibles, because as a boring old person with a house and a mortgage I am always optimistic that I will find a nice end table or something there.

So far no luck, but I have seen lots of interesting floral couches.

In conclusion, my new walk to work is much nicer than all the trash I walked through on the way to school in the Bronx, and no one wolf-whistles at me or calls me "mami." I love my new job!

Cognitive Dissonance

The first round of applicants to TFA for 2011 just got accepted, and now everyone in the office who was a TFA corps member gets to spend the next two weeks calling them and trying to convince them to join. It's weird to hear so many people having so many animated conversations (most of which start with "CONGRATULATIONS!") in our normally quiet office, I feel sort of like I'm working at a telemarketing company.

The other weird thing is having the conversations themselves. I am really glad I did TFA (obviously, or I wouldn't have decided to work for them) and everything I tell the people I call is absolutely true (you get great ongoing support, you work with wonderful people, you can get a Masters degree in two years for free, you develop really positive and meaningful relationships with some kids). But at the beginning of my first year teaching I really resented TFA for not giving me any warning that kids would throw desks in my classroom and curse at me, and now here I am calling accepted corps members and not telling them about eye-stabbing or getting called a cracker or crying every night for the first few months, because I know that would make them not join and that after they finish the two years they will be glad they did it. Somehow I have to convince myself that this doesn't make me a jerk.

Ouch

One of Ben's grad school friends is going through a rough breakup, and Ben tried to comfort him by joking that being single is probably better for his research productivity. When Ben relayed that conversation to me I feigned insult and said that I didn't think I hurt his research, to which he replied, "yeah, but you're very different from a real girlfriend."

Twenty minutes of frantic back-peddling and explaining later, I still have no idea what he was trying to say.

A Good TV Night

First, TFA got shouted out on The Office! Well, sort of.



(The second clip is from this week's episode.)

Then, I saw something new that I want on 30 Rock:

Ambition is the willingness to kill the things you love and eat them to stay alive.

How long do you think it will be until I can find that throw pillow for sale somewhere?

I must be really charming...

... because this morning I had an email waiting for me from the director of the fancy private school we visited yesterday, asking where to send his $1,000 donation to TFA!

AND I got another random check in the mail from Lehman! This one's only for $60, but still... they can't stop paying me for having put up with them for two years! I'm getting fonder and fonder of my alma mater every day...

The Other Side of the Achievement Gap

Today at work I got to visit a really fancy and really excellent private pre-K to 12 school in an affluent suburb of Philly. Since I don't directly support teachers of any specific grade level or subject area, I opted to visit the early childhood classrooms because I thought they would be cutest - and oh holy cow was I right. That place was absolutely magical, it was like every perfect school from a movie and your imagination rolled into one - Ms. Honey's classroom from Matilda combined with that sweet classroom from Kindergarten Cop combined with rainbows and glitter and pure unadulterated happiness. There were only 12 kids in each class (with 2 teachers), the building was exquisite, the walls were covered floor to ceiling with beautiful student work, the kids were ridiculously ahead of grade level (the pre-kindergartners I saw were reading better than the first graders I worked with at my old school), and they were able to have luxuries unheard of in test-centric public schools like unstructured play time, art and music every day, and more than 15 minutes of recess. The kindergartners have an incentive system where every time they do something good they get a penny in their class "kindness jar," and when there's enough pennies they get to buy books and toys to send to their sister school in Uganda. They got so excited anytime they earned a penny, and it wasn't even a reward directly for them! It was absolutely unreal. I would seriously go back into the classroom for 12 years there, since that's the only way I could afford to enroll my own kids. The only negative I could see was that they aren't allowed to have sweets, only healthy snacks. Lame.

Also, today at Rite Aid somebody stole my gloves. Well, technically I left them on the counter when I paid, but I almost immediately realized my mistake and went back, and they were already gone. I am very depressed.

Sanity Restored

Look where I was yesterday!

It was crazy crowded (we had to wait in line forever just to buy tickets to get on the Metro, which was packed so tight you didn't have to hold onto anything because you literally couldn't fall down), but I got special guest passes through work (I guess TFA is considered an officially sane organization) so we got to be in the front section!

Ben, me, and my awesome friend from work who is also my neighbor

There were lots of people with signs of varying cleverness.

"Red, White & Jew: Matzah balls, not bombs"	"Bipartisanship is not gay hook-up"
"Tea is the new kool-aid"	"We came from Kentucky...to escape Rand Paul!"

I was really impressed with the people who came all the way from Kentucky, until I saw a group with "Alaskans for Sanity" signs - wow! I hope they at least made a weekend out of their trip, and didn't travel all that way for a mere three hours.

It was really weird to be close enough to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to be able to view them with my own eyes, instead of on a TV (like usual) or a jumbotron (like most people at the rally). It was also really weird to find myself at a surprise Cat Stevens concert:

Stewart requested "Peace Train"

And then a surprise Ozzy Osbourne concert:

Colbert interrupted him with "Crazy Train"

Followed by a surprise O'Jays concert:

Everyone can agree on "Love Train"

Then Stewart and Colbert also decided to give a concert, and sang a song about loving America while wearing doofy flag sweaters:

It was at this point I noticed that I could see the teleprompter, and I had to restrain myself from spending the rest of the rally staring at it instead of the stage.

After some more surprise musical guests (a Sheryl Crow and Kid Rock duet?), a visit by the "dude you have no Koran!" guy, and other assorted shenanigans, Stewart and Colbert decided to debate Sanity vs. Fair in "Formidable Opponent" style

They were joined by a series of increasingly bizarre guests...

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (a Muslim!)	R2D2 (a robot!)
A giant, paper mache Stephen Colbert	John Oliver dressed as Peter Pan

The debate ended with Stewart giving an eloquent and impassioned speech pleading for politicians and reporters to engage in more reasonable discourse, which was quite moving, but unfortunately just preaching to the choir. Then everyone got on stage together to sing one last song, and hug each other and wave at the audience SNL-style.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is REALLY TALL

The whole day was incredibly fun - the weather was perfect, the show was great (although I wish they would have let Cat Stevens finish his song...), and everyone in attendance lived up to the rally's promise of sanity and reasonable-ness. Despite it being crazy crowded, everyone was so friendly and polite - people were chatting, sharing snacks with each other, and when someone bumped into you (as was inevitable) they were quick to apologize and make sure you were okay. Based on my experiences in other large crowds I know that is not the norm, so it was really wonderful to see so many people actually behaving like humans. And most importantly, there were more people there than at Glenn Beck's rally.