dbienvenue

 ... to let the blogosphere know I'm no longer in my twenties. I have, in fact, been thirty for the better part of half an hour now. As you were. Read Full Story

So, yesterday was Saturday and I didn’t post and today’s post is going to be truncated, but there has been progress with the move: With the CDs, I’m now through the Ps, and am definitely going to need to run out for more CD albums in the near future. While out for a walk in the neighborhood yesterday, we found two wardrobe boxes on the curb, and John carried them – both at once – the twoish blocks back to our house, removed the tied-off bag of dog doo that another neighbor had so classily... Read Full Story

As I’ve mentioned before, my husband and I are both doctoral students (in fact, as of this month, we’re both ABD – All But Dissertation – congratulations, John!). We’re currently living in Baton Rouge, LA, which is the city where John is a student at LSU, and it’s located more or less midway between Lafayette, LA, where I’m a student at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (about an hour’s drive) and New Orleans, where until this month I was a lecturer at Xavier University of Louisiana... Read Full Story

So, here are the results of yesterday’s first-ever sourdough bread baking. Unfortunately, I was halfway through making the sourdough before it occurred to me to take pictures, but here’s one after the first rise: The two indentations are from the tips of two of my fingers. When bread dough is done with its first rise, you should be able to make indentations in it with your fingertips that stay after you’ve taken your fingers away. Also, the dough should have doubled in size. Rising time... Read Full Story

So, as I mention in the subtitle and in my first entry, I’m kind of into the whole home ec thing (as long as there’s no cleaning involved; John does the dishes). So I thought, to explain what I mean, I’d make a list of stuff I’ve made in the past week or so: My Grammie’s Brownies : This one is almost a gimme. My Grammie Mylott made the greatest brownies in the world, and so did my mom, and then recently, when I started baking at least weekly, I called her for the recipe – which she no longer... Read Full Story

So, the reason I decided I wanted to start blogging again was that I was goofing off on Youtube and came across this (a couple years old) piece apparently from Fox and Friends about a study (from LSU of all places) demonstrating that Mr. Rogers is responsible for the Sense of Entitlement so prevalent in Kids Today: This infuriated me for a number of reasons, and I had no idea where/how to go about expressing this. And I thought to myself, "Gee, if only I had a forum for expressing this kind... Read Full Story

So, there was a blog here beginning a little over two years ago, and continuing until a little over a year ago. By then I'd had a baby. And a few disgruntled political rants. And I ran out of time and energy. I still really don't have either time or energy, but I wanted to give this another shot anyway, 'cause I'm chock full of opinions and interests and stuff. And I figure, if my half a reader (or less?) wants to hear about them, that's awesome. So ... Things I expect I might be interested... Read Full Story

So, the last time I posted, Danny was a month old, I hadn't yet gone back to work, and it was probably daytime. Now, it's ten of six in the morning and I've been up for going on two hours. Also? Danny had his three-month birthday this week. There were cupcakes. What has life been like since the beginning of January? My parents came, as did my brother and sister-in-law, to meet Danny and celebrate Christmas (well, epiphany anyway). There was vegetarian dining, king cake, and lots of oohing and... Read Full Story

So, it's been months since I've written anything. Months during which I blew up like a balloon, and yet people were constantly telling me I "wasn't that big," which is really not an encouraging thing to say to a very pregnant woman. Just a general word of advice, the following are all terrible things to say to a pregnant woman: "You're still so small!" "You're enormous!" "You're really not very big!" "You must be due any minute!" These are all equally insulting, and equally likely to inspire... Read Full Story

So, it has occurred to me that my social networking rant just looks like me hating on people who can figure out who they are pretty easily. Here's the thing: they're people I really like and respect and that's part of what makes me really sad and also really angry about the whole thing. I've been a grad student for sixish years now and am in my fourth year of college-level teaching. This isn't a lot of experience, but it's enough to make me "hireable" when I start looking for a tenure-track... Read Full Story