Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Wave at the Window

My Dad came and visited me today. I got up early and tidied my room up a bit first. I cleaned it about a week ago, so it's mostly nice looking, but I did things like made the bed, cleaned up all my Vernors bottles, and Febreezed the place. Last semester, my father gave me a ten minute warning before showing up at my place at 10 o'clock on a Saturday morning, and I scrambled to make the place look respectable. He came in, and noticing the bed, said "What? You can't make your bed?" I was still in my jim-jams and my hair was still as messy as an explosion in an umbrella factory. Thankfully, that did not happen today, because my Dad called last night.
Because I recently had my birthday, he also bought me presents. I was thinking, since I didn't come home for the holiday, that I wouldn't be getting anything. I got Lost season five, Mary, Queen of Scots, Anne of a Thousand Days, and a crucifix. Obviously, I loved all of it. I'm still watching Lost, though I sometimes find myself wondering why. And I'm a huge history nerd, so the two movies depicting Tudor royalty is totally awesome. (I actually saw Anne of a Thousand Days, but it was years ago; I was at most fifteen.) I also collect crucifixes, so having a new one is nice. It's not the sort of design I would pick out for myself. I kind of looks like something a Spanish conquistador would wear over his breast-plate, and thinking about it like that makes me like it. Also, I love gauche jewelry in general, so it was a good choice. (In fact, I want to decorate my future home/apartment with as much ticky-tact stuff as possible.) Is it tasteless? Then I'm in love. I was actually surprised I didn't get a book, given that I am a literature dork and that my Mom told me she had bought The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I'm wondering, since she said she had enjoyed the first few chapters, if she decided to keep it for herself. If so, then I'm proud of myself, since the last time my Mom read a book it was while we were on a family vacation in 2002 and it was House of Sand and Fog. (Take a wild guess who gave her that suggestion.) If I accidentally got my Mom reading, then I can hold off on getting my book.
My Dad and I went out for lunch. We mostly talked about my Dad's new job. He's decided to go back to teaching. He's going to be teaching a science class for elementary education majors. He's already decided that the students are probably going to be idiots, even though he hasn't met them yet. (Sounds like most professors I love. They already have contempt for people.) He complained that he's not sure what kind of labs he can run, and asked for my lab books and notes. I almost certainly have something, since I'm a bit of a packrat, but they're probably at home, and I don't like to send people to dig through my stuff, since they might find something they're not suppose to.
He also complained that he doesn't like the way the lab classroom is set up (not enough safety stuff, only one exit). I told him about my evolution lab that I did when I was in basic biology. Basically, we had spread out four types of beans on a table and called then prey and used utensils as predators. We then had thirty second periods to "eat" (grab with utensil and deposit in a cup) the food, charting the kinds of beans that it was easiest for our utensils to eat, and watching predators and prey select on one another. My Dad thought this was a great idea, even though my labmates were not necessarily impressed by this "experiment." (I have to admit I wasn't either, if only because evolution already made sense to me.) But it's a good conceptual way to think about it, and it requires some activity.
We got some housekeeping stuff done (figured out graduation stuff, etc.) and then he decided to leave. My Dad is always trying to get out of here when he comes, since he hates driving at night.
When I was a little girl, every time one of my parents would leave, I would go run to one of the windows in the front of our house and wave to my parents as they drove away. When I came to college, I started doing a similar sort of thing, only this time waving from one of the door windows at the bottom of the stairwells. I did this again today, one of the last times. It' s a nice tradition. Sometimes I tear up a little, but I'm not even totally sure why.

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