I just watched Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture." If you haven't seen it, go to abcnews.go.com and click on Watch Video. The lecture is the final one in a great professor's career - he was diagnosed with cancer and has little time left to live, but leaves his university - Carnegie Mellon - with some advice for how to live out your dreams. One thing that caught my attention was in the interview of him by Diane Sawyer, she pointed out that Pausch pushed his students to be fearless, to take risks rather than taking the safe route. He even created an award for the most spectacular failure. I immediately thought of the class I just taught last night, where a student was explaining some options for a text she was going to present in class. I suggested the easier one to her to not make it so hard on her. When I do things like this - and I do it a lot - I always feel like I'm doing the student a favor, helping them out, getting them through the class. It has now occurred to me that I'm doing the opposite. I'm not doing a favor when I'm expecting very little from them, because that's all I'll get out of them. Instead, I need to expect them to change the world, and then give them the tools and the encouragement to get it done. It'll take more work and might make some people hate me, but what am I teaching for, if not to make a difference in my student's lives. Ask me how it's worked for me in about 6 months. I'm hoping I'll see great things.

My Own Personal Top Chef

I'm somewhat addicted to cooking shows. When I had a TV and cable, I would watch the Food Network all the time and now I watch episodes of Top Chef (which people record from Bravo Network and upload to YouTube). Jordan occasionally watches with me and apparently has gotten inspired. Last night, she was playing dress up with Kiki - we had a Kiki ballerina, a Kiki football player, and finally a Kiki waitress who brought me a menu and took my order for dinner. I made my order, and in about 5 minutes, Jordan came in with my first course - leftover noodles which she warmed up in the microwave (I was in my room and had no idea what was happening). Once the noodles were finished, she took away the plate and brought me my second course - a frozen burrito which she (over) cooked for me. The final course was the piece de resistance, though. She took strawberries which I had cut up for strawberry shortcake and mixed it with some chunks of the shortcake and some powdered sugar. She put that in a small bowl and placed the bowl on a plate. To the plate, she put syrup around the edge and sprinkled that with powdered and brown sugars. Very fancy, I have to say. The whole dinner only cost me $15, too. Budget gourmet indeed!

The Close Puppy

Last night I was cooking my delicious Stir Fry Velveted Chicken. I cut up the chicken, let it marinate for about a half hour, cooked the rice and stir fried the chicken - the whole process took about an hour. During the entire process, Kiki was no more than 3 inches away from my legs. She is definitely a close puppy - always needs to be as close a possible. We started dinner, with Kiki laying under my chair (this time actually touching my feet) when Jordan looked at her and said "what is that?" I looked down and saw something disgusting in Kiki's back fur. I wasn't sure what it was, but it looked like it had once been in a human or animal and then came out somewhere, if you know what I mean. I was a little disgusted, but being a true mom who has touched some truly disgusting things in my time, I reached down and picked it out. It was a piece of uncooked chicken. This is how close she gets to me. I dropped a piece of chicken off the cutting board, and it landed in her fur. It does make me feel loved, but really, what's a woman got to do to get a little space?
BTW, as I write this, Kiki is, of course, 3 inches from my feet. She'd be touching them, but I'm resting them on a raised footrest on the desk. sigh.

Racist Dog?

I'm starting to think that Kiki is racist. Is this possible? Generally, when Kiki sees a new person, she gets all excited and jumps up on them - a habit I'm trying to get her to stop, but something she still does. We have neighbors that are Black, and when she sees them, she gets excited, but its more like nervousness. She'll start barking and she'll charge at them a little, but then come and hide behind me while still barking. They are a really sweet family and would love to pet her and play with her, but she never will let them get close. My plan is to introduce her to them gently, maybe hold her while letting them pet her. I just don't want to make them feel bad by letting them know she doesn't like them. It makes me a little sad. I've managed to raise a daughter who accepts people no matter what they look like, now I guess I have to work on my dog.

...and the world remains silent.

Since school is over now, I've started to get back into working on finishing the dissertation. Looking to see what is happening in the news regarding Darfur - the subject of my diss - I came across this article. What is going on? Why is nothing being done to fix this problem. At least 300,000 people have died - a conservative estimate when compared to others of 400 or 500K. 2.5 million people have had their homes destroyed, wells poisoned, livelihoods vanished. Women are attacked and raped, children are forced to grow up in refugee camps when their schools aren't being bombed. Aid organizations are doing their best to help the people out, but are at risk of being attacked, robbed, and murdered themselves. The U.N. tries to work with the government to send in 26,000 peacekeeping troops - troops that were supposed to be sent in January but still aren't there, and this is the same government that sent the plane that bombed the school that killed the children. I don't know what needs to be done, I'm not an expert on intervention in things like this, and the situation is very complex - with both sides erring in major ways - but surely more can be done than is currently.
It makes me sad every time I start to research the current situation. When I chose Darfur as my topic, 2 1/2 years ago, I was fairly certain it would be all over by the time I finished writing. The end of the diss is in sight. The end of the conflict, not visible at all.