Category: Personal

Janet Stemwedel is marking everybody’s favorite Hallmark holiday by posting an interview with her mother about going back to school to get a science degree. As Janet says, this was a major inspiration to her: I would not be who I am or where I am today without my mom, Sally Stemwedel. Although I probably… Continue reading Happy Mother’s Day

I went to school with a crazy person. Well, OK, that in and of itself is not surprising, given the amount of schooling I have, and the subject I majored in. I almost certainly went to school with a lot of crazy people, and I can easily come up with several people who probably count… Continue reading There But For the Grace of God

Greetings from pitch-dark Northern California, where I’m just ecstatically happy to be awake at 5am. Jet lag sucks. Other things that suck? Weather delays. We were supposed to arrive at about 1:00 yesterday afternoon, but snow in Chicago screwed that up completely. We spent a good hour and a half sitting on the plane at… Continue reading Air Travel Blues

A little while after dinner last night, I started to feel achy and chilled and kind of light-headed, so I retired to bed. Where I had really spectacular fever dreams about… blogging. Somehow, I had come up with the greatest blog post in human history, or some such. I can’t recall what it was, but… Continue reading A Smell of Petroleum Pervades Throughout

I don’t usually do “memes,” but the “weird things” one (via Janet) seems entertaining. So here are some weird things about me: 1) I carry on complicated conversations with the dog, translating her bits into English in a high-pictched voice. I started doing this to amuse/ annoy Kate, but now I do it even when… Continue reading Weird Things About Me

You can’t buy a car these days without a rear window defroster– the little built-in electric heaters that melt ice and frost off the rear window. You push a button on the dashboard, and the ice just melts away, no scraping required. Why is it, then, that to clear the windshield, you have to rely… Continue reading Automotive Question

So, as mentioned previously, Kate and I are planning to go to Japan for the World SF Convention, and spend a couple of weeks doing touristy stuff. We’re down for about a week in Kyoto, and a week in the Yokohama/Tokyo area (where the con is). Then, there are 3-4 days at the end of… Continue reading Takayama or Kanazawa?

I lost a lot of weight, read a lot of books, taught a lot of classes, did a bit of research, and oh, yeah, I got tenure. I think that last outweighs the miserable stomach problems by, oh, quite a bit. And now, that’s officially last year, at least for those using the Western calendar… Continue reading 2006 Was Just This Year, You Know?

For those who care, I’m “interviewed” over at Page 3.14. The scare quotes are because the interview was actually an email response to a list of questions, which is why parts of it sound stilted. Still, free publicity…