Weekend Notes

Cloudy! Crummy weather! But enough non-rain times yesterday for me and Jake to put together some wood planters, do yard work, and prep our patio for summer.

Dinner: Milo at strawberries wrapped in spinach, cherry tomatoes, rice noodles, a wonton, and cheese. Nora ate...strawberries. And the teeniest tiniest bite of one rice noodle (approximately 0.5 mm thick). LE SIGH.

Jake and I ate homemade hot and sour soup with rice noodles, tomatoes, and spinach. Super awesome recipe. Yum.

But! I successfully made granola bars. I have been struggling with this for a long time because it is hard to get the consistency right. Sometimes it won't set up, and it's granola mush. Other times, it breaks apart and just becomes granola. But now I have succeeded in making actual bars, and the recipe I have is really delicious while still being decent for you (includes stuff like wheat germ, oats, dried cherries, and only has honey for a sweetener!). This is a big score for me because the kids love granola bars but I dislike feeding them what you can buy in the store. Even the healthy organic ones have about 30 ingredients.

Last weekend I went for a run in normal shoes and before the second mile was done my knees were dust. So frustrating. But this weekend I went for a run barefoot style and did 4.5 miles without trouble, so hooray! Part of it might have had to do with the fact that I was going up and down more hills, so it was giving me some relief from relentless flat foot pounding. But then again, this has become the kind of thing where there are about 80 different variables and I always attribute the latest change to whether my knees do well or poorly. It's totally non logical and superstitious and stuff.

More bad work stuff! Last year our chancellor, who has since departed for greener, private pastures, set up a private company to consult with some administrators to come up with a new HR design. They've now released their recommendations, one of them being no more cost of living raises. I mean, not that we've had any since 2006, but that's because there was no money rather than it not being built into the pay structure. Also, compensation would be determined by market analysis. Which means...what? (And how do you do that for everybody on campus, including janitors, secretaries, academic staff, medical personnel, food service workers, science professors, English professors, etc., etc., etc.?) So any raises would be determined by this non-defined market analysis, and by merit as determined by one's peers (which I'm sure would involve no favoritism whatsoever). In addition, these adjustments are supposed to enable a decrease in one's compensation as well as a possible increase. Also, the recommendations include eliminating the separate categories of classified vs. academic staff, which means classified staff (like secretaries and janitors) will lose a bunch of benefits that they've accrued separately due to collective bargaining action in the past.

How much will it take until faculty vote with their feet en masse? Things are really out of control!