2016.10.17: Adjustments

Most of my work day was spent making adjustments to my class content, trying to figure out which few aspects of the 5 books of the Pentateuch get mentioned in a 90 minute time frame. I think I have an outline I can live with, but I’m still not sure I’m down to 90 minutes. (For those who care, I put the Documentary Hypothesis discussion on a previous day’s session on historiography. The topics were determined previously by the person I am eventually succeeding and with whom I will be co-teaching this term. This adjustment gives me more time with the selected themes of the Pentateuch.)

I joined the talk time again after lunch. I started again with my conversation partner from last week, which was good. She knows what I can do and what I can’t, so it helps me engage more meaningfully more expediently. However, later, there were three more women who joined the table. One had been in dialogue with other people, but they left after an hour, and then she joined us. I realized that the dynamics became more challenging, but I just tried to keep on. One of the women was excited to know that I had been in Tanzania and knew some Kiswahili. She also had been a teacher at a girls school in southern Tanzania for about 10 years. This is a good place to practice speaking Swedish, but I did do a bit of Swedish conversation with the business guy at the morning fika. It just gets so pedantic with my limited vocabulary and capacity, so I try not to burden others too much with my belabored and pathetically slow Swedish. So, I have conversations with myself. I am quite patient with myself as a conversation partner, but I’m not good at correcting her–as if I’d know if I’m correct!

This evening while Anya was off at pole vaulting practice and running twenty 60 meter sprints(!), I was adjusting our step-down transformer.

I decided to get the Roomba out of storage in the closet. (For my mom and dad: this is a robotic vacuum cleaner.) I was thinking that it wouldn’t be too practical here, because every room has a significant threshold at the doorway (about 2 cm or 7/8ths of an inch); the Roomba won’t be able to crawl over it. However, as the dust bunnies start to appear, I figure I’ll get it going and bring it into different rooms throughout the day.

A little back story on the Roomba: When Eric was diagnosed with brain cancer, we got a Golden Retriever puppy that Anya named Boomer and Eric trained. Goldens are a breed that are genetically predisposed to being seizure-sensitive, and seizures are part of the brain cancer journey. (Woldie, I still wonder if Eric’s seizure at your house freaked out your boys when they were so impressionable!) One day when we were in the crazy days of Eric’s cancer treatments and I was stressed over all the dog hair, I knew I had to make some tactical purchases. I went out and bought the Roomba and a leather coat, as my black wool coat took too much effort to sticky-roller blonde dog hair off of it. I actually wore the leather coat today. Boomer went to live with Jon and Ann on Lake Sammamish before we went to Norway. This July, the Sunday before we left for Tanzania and Sweden, we were told that Boomer was put to sleep to relieve her suffering from cancer. Boomer was well loved and brought lots of joy, and the Roomba reminds me of her (and all the hair I pulled out of the Roomba!).

With blessings,

Beth