Nilly!!! Hi there, Mrs. Married Doctor-Type Person!!

Mrs. Married Doctor-Type Person!!

See, this is one strange thing about all that happened in the last few months. Instead of just being me, suddenly in the classes I'm starting to teach next week, I'm written as Dr. Nilly OldLastName-NewLastName. Who is that person, and will she be also grading instead of me?

(I have to leave my old last name, for academic purposes, and only add to it the new last name, because all of my publication and academic work up until now were done under my old name. Which, in fact, gives me - um, us, I mean *us*, I should get used to thinking in "us" when it comes to stuff like this - some time to figure what I'm going to do with my last name everywhere else.)

I was going to ask if you were changing your name! I notice coworkers keeping their old name at work and using both socially.

ImuchmoredepressingN, airline pilots make as much as bookstore employees (as I noted when a B&N coworker cashed in his check--it was as much as the pilot here makes).

The plane landed and I stepped into the cockpit. "Read this," the first officer said. He handed me a letter from the airline to him. It was headlined "LETTER OF CONCERN." It seems this poor fellow had taken three sick days in the past year. The letter was a warning not to take another one -- or else...

He then showed me his pay stub. He took home $405 this week. My life was completely and totally in his hands for the past hour and he's paid less than the kid who delivers my pizza.

I told the guys that I have a whole section in my new movie about how pilots are treated (using pilots as only one example of how people's wages have been slashed and the middle class decimated). In the movie I interview a pilot for a major airline who made $17,000 last year. For four months he was eligible -- and received -- food stamps. Another pilot in the film has a second job as a dog walker.

"I have a second job!," the two pilots said in unison. One is a substitute teacher. The other works in a coffee shop. You know, maybe it's just me, but the two occupations whose workers shouldn't be humpin' a second job are brain surgeons and airline pilots. Call me crazy.

I told them about how Capt. "Sully" Sullenberger (the pilot who safely landed the jet in the Hudson River) had testified in Congress that no pilot he knows wants any of their children to become a pilot. Pilots, he said, are completely demoralized. He spoke of how his pay has been cut 40% and his own pension eliminated. Most of the TV news didn't cover his remarks and the congressmen quickly forgot them. They just wanted him to play the role of "HERO," but he was on a more important mission.

Sullenberger is going to be on the Daily Show tonight--I hope Jon asks him about this.

Nilly do you have enough bookshelves in your new home? Do you need us to come help you unpack and decorate?! We can (or maybe we can't, but we can wish).

the airline stuff is terrible.

t /dad was a commercial pilot

All this talk of moving and organizing made me think of something I need and can't find. Maybe someone here can help? In my new kitchen, we have a super deep drawer in which to keep our oversized spoons, spatulas, etc. I'm looking for a stackable utensil holder so I can put the bigger items on the bottom and smaller items in a lift-out top. Make sense? Seen it? Right now, the drawer is just a mess.

GC, I have not seen that specific item, but I always ignore the aisles, and look in general organization for dresser drawers and jewelry drawers, socks, lingerie, etc.

I was going to ask if you were changing your name!

Dunno yet. Academically, it's easy - I add the new name to the old one. Anything else? Still a mystery. I didn't change my ID card or anything official yet (um, we didn't even take the wedding pictures from the photographer yet, everything was so hectic, what with the move and all the holidays and all), so I - yup, I mean "we" again - still have time to figure this out.

do you have enough bookshelves in your new home?

Frankly, no. Well, for *my* books, it's enough, as far as I can tell with only some of it unpacked by now. But he has lots of his own books still at his parents' place, and he really wishes some of them were here at some point, so we'll have to see how we arrange stuff with double-duty on some shelves and such.

Do you need us to come help you unpack and decorate?!

With the unpacking I'll probably manage all on my own, but the decorating will definitely need some help, since I pretty much suck at such things.

There's a train that gets here straight from the airport, too, and mac will have lots of places to play in around here. A place to sleep? Um, we'll re-build the sukkah from the holiday that was just finished, and manage to have another room this way (hey, I can wish, too, right?).

[Edit: GC, maybe get two separate relatively-flat boxes, to put one on top of the other? Or am I misunderstanding your need completely?]

Nilly!

Kermit waves!!!