ReadySetGo

Seen at MaggieMay's, and elsewhere, a fun gift pyramid:

By the end of the calendar year, I will send a tangible, physical gift to each of the first five people to comment here. The catch? Each person must make the same offer on her/his blog.

It's like a chain letter, but better! Everybody wins. (I should warn you, the way this semester is going, it's likely to be the very very end of the calendar year before I can send stuff out. But I'll have fun planning!)

Connections

FINALLY, it's happened! All these years I've read about pseudonymous bloggers finding connections with each other, being "discovered" (in good ways and bad) by others who know them in real life. I'm fairly careful with my pseudonymity, but I always thought it would be fun to serendipitously meet other people at my institution who blog. Sadly, it seemed that no one did... whenever I read a particularly good piece at Dean Dad's or Maggie's New Kid's or any of the places where I find little gems of commentary on the academic world, I'd face awkward moments of wondering how to work them into conversations with my friends here. "I read this great discussion the other day... do you read academic blogs? No? Well, anyway, it brought up these interesting arguments about tenure..." No one seems entirely confused by references to the blogosphere, but they don't light up in recognition either.

But today I was friended by a colleague on Facebook, a very cool person I've known for several years, and when I went to her profile, I saw a suspicious number of familiar faces, folks I know by different names on their blogs. I thought... could it be? And, in fact, I'd come across a fellow blogger, somebody right here on my campus, and this just tickles me to pieces. She's more identifiable than I am, so I won't name her here, but - hi, friend! :)

Figlet

Oooooh, we love fig trees. The LWI loves the fruit, which reminds him of his faraway homeland; I love the dusty cool scent of the leaves. We figured out a year or so ago that this was a climate that could support figs, and when we found out that our friend Sparky had thriving trees, we were just beside ourselves with glee.

She came over for lunch earlier this week, and glorious creature that she is, she brought us a cutting from one of her fig trees, which we planted this morning. We have a big gaping sun-baked space in the back yard where a dense Bradford pear used to stand; when this little guy gets bigger, he should provide some welcome shade.

I'm anthropomorphizing a little much, but he's so darned cute. I'm seriously tempted to make little pencil marks on the fence to mark how fast he grows.

In the longstanding tradition of blogger self-portraits, here we are, the fig and I: