2006-04-13
How the University of Minnesota tried to kill my wife and other sordid tales...
Well, the last posting was a little premature. "Up and running..." is a great idiom for a website, but does not accurately describe our situation here. Birgit and I went to a Fellowship dinner on Tuesday night at the McNamara Center. I was kind of forced to go, because I won the Zoltai Fellowship last year and the university emailed me (a half dozen times), called me, and called me again, insisting that I really should go and mingle with the bigwigs that give money for fellowships. I figured, why not, it is a free dinner and piano concert, and I really did like Mrs. Zoltai the one time I met her last year after hearing I was receiving the award. (She invited Birgit and I over at 9 o'clock at night, this 80-some year-old lady, and kept pouring us shots of Baileys and talking about Hungary. It was surreal. Very cool.)
So we went to this big hullabaloo, and of course, Mrs. Zoltai wasn't there -- I can't say I blame her, as she's probably been to a million of these, and the main purpose the university has this event is to get more money from the donors. So Birgit and I nervously stood around eating appetizers, etc. At some point a dear old woman named Charlotte came up and stood next to us. She was going blind, but had more wit about her than the rest of the room full of pompous donors and graduate students combined. Her husband had been a Forestry professor -- recently passed away. She was now the representative of the Trust he had founded. We sat and chatted about everything for a long time. I kept helping her down wine -- she couldn't really see where her glass was, and Birgit helped her find her seat when it was time to eat. At one point she said: "Ah, you don't have to stand here entertaining me just because I'm here. You can go mingle with more interesting people you know." And was forced to turn to her and honestly state, "Charlotte, you're the only friend we've got here. You can't get rid of us!" After that, the three of us bonded and huddled around this little drink table until it was time to eat. She doesn't live far away from here and invited us to swing by any time -- particularly because I sometimes play basketball on the courts near her house. Who knows if we ever will, but it was really great meeting such a down to earth lady at a place as full of itself as that.
We then sat at Table #53, in the back room of McNamara Center, and watched the University President and Provost and some other really important people, including several Regents, espouse how great the university is and how the room was "loaded." (I thought the latter statement was a little risque, but I suppose the university knows how to work over millionaires.) We were seated at a table with a bunch of other fellowship winners who were coerced into coming -- none of our benefactors had shown up. I met a cool Korean pharmacist Ph.D. She was really nice. The others were so far across the round table that we couldn't hear them or communicate. The table was over half empty. Luckily -- or un-luckily, as you will hear later -- we were sitting next to the kitchen, though, so we were served our food first. We were then served both fillet mignon and Red Snapper, and a bunch of expensive deserts. The whole time waitstaff kept coming around filling our glasses with wine like it was going out of style.
We came home. I worked on cartography stuff until about midnight. Birgit finished a novel. We turned the lights out. I woke up at 2 a.m. to the sound of someone vomiting in the bathroom. Birgit was on the toilet the entire evening and morning. She went to the doctor -- the university gave her e. coli! So we were forced to go to a dinner we weren't that excited about attending. We were stood up by my donor. And on top of it, Birgit got a nasty food poisoning, while still recovering from shigella and still fighting off C-deph, which is deadly. She was supposed to go meet with some specialists at the state institute for gastro-diseases on Wednesday, but actually couldn't because the university poisoned her the night before. So now she has to wait another month before she can be checked up on for the deadly disease. She's irked. I'm pissed!!! I'm actually wondering if anyone else, including the 90 year-olds who may not be able to survive e. coli got sick that night. This is ridiculous!
And so... Birgit was on an IV drip yesterday. I taught lab with about two hours of sleep. But today she is feeling better -- on yet another anti-biotic. She's taking a nap right now. I'm tired and about to take one as well. We've decided to continue with our plan of going up to Duluth for haircuts tomorrow and then wandering off to work on the portfolio part of our website, boycotting Easter. But we aren't rolling... more like sliding along slowly.
One fun thing of note: I guest lectured for Bob today, as he is out of town at a cartography conference. It was a lot of fun. I forgot how much I enjoy lecturing. I can't wait to teach Europe again this summer. I love that course. And oddly enough, I'll be doing even more lecturing as it turns out. There is an outreach workshop being put on by the Institute of Global Studies for K-12 Educators. It deals with immigration and nationalism in Europe. I was invited to lecture for three half-day sessions. I'll get paid some money, and since I am teaching Europe this summer, the topic will be fresh on my mind. I'm looking forward to it!
Now... I have to finish two short articles for an academic encyclopedia that I foolishly signed up to write by May 1. May seemed so far away in October! Then, I need to prepare for my phone interview on Monday morning with the community college. And finally, I want to finish a great book by Mark Monmonier from 1985 -- Technology and Cartography. It is kind of funny reading such an old book and realizing that half of what he predicts comes true and half of it is utter nonesense. It is rare that you read a book these days that defines and then explains what a CRT monitor is. "In the future, most maps may be read on CRTs." Wrong! LCDs! ;>) Ha!
So we went to this big hullabaloo, and of course, Mrs. Zoltai wasn't there -- I can't say I blame her, as she's probably been to a million of these, and the main purpose the university has this event is to get more money from the donors. So Birgit and I nervously stood around eating appetizers, etc. At some point a dear old woman named Charlotte came up and stood next to us. She was going blind, but had more wit about her than the rest of the room full of pompous donors and graduate students combined. Her husband had been a Forestry professor -- recently passed away. She was now the representative of the Trust he had founded. We sat and chatted about everything for a long time. I kept helping her down wine -- she couldn't really see where her glass was, and Birgit helped her find her seat when it was time to eat. At one point she said: "Ah, you don't have to stand here entertaining me just because I'm here. You can go mingle with more interesting people you know." And was forced to turn to her and honestly state, "Charlotte, you're the only friend we've got here. You can't get rid of us!" After that, the three of us bonded and huddled around this little drink table until it was time to eat. She doesn't live far away from here and invited us to swing by any time -- particularly because I sometimes play basketball on the courts near her house. Who knows if we ever will, but it was really great meeting such a down to earth lady at a place as full of itself as that.
We then sat at Table #53, in the back room of McNamara Center, and watched the University President and Provost and some other really important people, including several Regents, espouse how great the university is and how the room was "loaded." (I thought the latter statement was a little risque, but I suppose the university knows how to work over millionaires.) We were seated at a table with a bunch of other fellowship winners who were coerced into coming -- none of our benefactors had shown up. I met a cool Korean pharmacist Ph.D. She was really nice. The others were so far across the round table that we couldn't hear them or communicate. The table was over half empty. Luckily -- or un-luckily, as you will hear later -- we were sitting next to the kitchen, though, so we were served our food first. We were then served both fillet mignon and Red Snapper, and a bunch of expensive deserts. The whole time waitstaff kept coming around filling our glasses with wine like it was going out of style.
We came home. I worked on cartography stuff until about midnight. Birgit finished a novel. We turned the lights out. I woke up at 2 a.m. to the sound of someone vomiting in the bathroom. Birgit was on the toilet the entire evening and morning. She went to the doctor -- the university gave her e. coli! So we were forced to go to a dinner we weren't that excited about attending. We were stood up by my donor. And on top of it, Birgit got a nasty food poisoning, while still recovering from shigella and still fighting off C-deph, which is deadly. She was supposed to go meet with some specialists at the state institute for gastro-diseases on Wednesday, but actually couldn't because the university poisoned her the night before. So now she has to wait another month before she can be checked up on for the deadly disease. She's irked. I'm pissed!!! I'm actually wondering if anyone else, including the 90 year-olds who may not be able to survive e. coli got sick that night. This is ridiculous!
And so... Birgit was on an IV drip yesterday. I taught lab with about two hours of sleep. But today she is feeling better -- on yet another anti-biotic. She's taking a nap right now. I'm tired and about to take one as well. We've decided to continue with our plan of going up to Duluth for haircuts tomorrow and then wandering off to work on the portfolio part of our website, boycotting Easter. But we aren't rolling... more like sliding along slowly.
One fun thing of note: I guest lectured for Bob today, as he is out of town at a cartography conference. It was a lot of fun. I forgot how much I enjoy lecturing. I can't wait to teach Europe again this summer. I love that course. And oddly enough, I'll be doing even more lecturing as it turns out. There is an outreach workshop being put on by the Institute of Global Studies for K-12 Educators. It deals with immigration and nationalism in Europe. I was invited to lecture for three half-day sessions. I'll get paid some money, and since I am teaching Europe this summer, the topic will be fresh on my mind. I'm looking forward to it!
Now... I have to finish two short articles for an academic encyclopedia that I foolishly signed up to write by May 1. May seemed so far away in October! Then, I need to prepare for my phone interview on Monday morning with the community college. And finally, I want to finish a great book by Mark Monmonier from 1985 -- Technology and Cartography. It is kind of funny reading such an old book and realizing that half of what he predicts comes true and half of it is utter nonesense. It is rare that you read a book these days that defines and then explains what a CRT monitor is. "In the future, most maps may be read on CRTs." Wrong! LCDs! ;>) Ha!
