My parents were visiting my Aunt Deb and Uncle Mark in Pennsylvania, so Josh and I went up there to hang out with them. My husband was particularly happy to be back on the blue side of the Mason-Dixon line. He also took great joy in "crossing the Potomac."

I had never been to Mark and Deb's before, but I was under the impression (I don't know why) that the home was a modest rambler. So when we pulled in to the estate at 443 Plum, I was a bit confused. The house is massive. At first look, it's at least twice as big as our "little" rental house--and that's not counting the 2-car attached garage or the 3-car detached garage.

Step inside, though, and it's a different story. This massive home has little more livable space than our bungalow. Tons of space wasted in high ceilings, balcony staircases and odd angles, just like every other McMansion I've been in. Not that it wasn't a nice house--a little "designer generic" with wood floors and granite countertops, etc--but I much prefer a cottage or foursquare that keeps the ratio of floorspace to volume high.

It was a nice visit. Short--which I was kind of glad for--but nice. I'm not the kind of person that can "do stuff" with people all day. I need a little down time. We played cards, cooked, and had lots of interesting talks. I look forward to doing it again.

The girls are getting along a lot better than they were immediately after Celie's bath. There is still the occasional hiss, and I'm worried that Olive might be preventing Celie from using the cat boxes, or might be ramping up the territorial marking as the problem of finding poop outside the box has been renewed. However they've definitely renewed their friendship, as evidenced by this sequence of photos, taken approximately one per hour over the course of an afternoon.

There's not much about the American system of government that I would recommend to other countries. Despite having an irrational attachment to our constitution--we're brought up to believe that it is the only thing keeping this country from degenerating into lawlessness and helotry--a critical look at the document makes me think we could do a lot better. I mean, the Bill of Rights was a great idea (though even that could use some updating), but the bulk of the constitution, the part that dictates how government operates, could use some real work. And even that doesn't really address the day-to-day operations of the government. The federal legislation that does that is in a sorrier state.

Still, we have one idea that I'm surprised hasn't caught on in other countries--withholding tax. I was unable to determine which countries withhold wages toward income tax, but after hearing for weeks about Italy's trouble collecting tax (to the tune of 27% of its $2 trillion GDP, or $540 billion) I can't help but think that a program of withholding tax would seriously curb this problem. Granted, a significant portion of this estimated underpayment is attributed to the "shadow economy" (read: mafia) in Italy, and this would not be recovered by a payroll deduction. Granted, such a system would take additional infrastructure. But said infrastructure would be, at minimum, self-funding. And then they wouldn't have to publish every Italian's reported income and tax payments.

After a long wait and a lot of prodding, the CEO of Baseball Operations for the Cleveland Indians called and informed Josh that he did not get the internship. Sometimes people (and their organizations with them) can be so stupid. I mean, there is simply no one better for the job than Josh. And even though this is specifically PITCHf/x job, and Josh is the PITCHf/x guru (google PITCHf/x and Josh's site is the third hit, right below Sportvision, the producer of the technology), they hired someone else, someone who hasn't worked with the data, and probably doesn't have an advanced degree in physics or experience coding with the ROOT statistical analysis program.

Needless to say, we're quite disappointed. Sure, it makes me short-term happy that my husband and I will get to spend the summer together, but this job was a step forward for our long-term goals, and now that's not happening.

My reliably optimistic husband has taken it well. He's still working hard, doing new and wonderful things with the data. He's optimistic about working with MLB teams as a consultant. Here's to hope.

but they clearly recognize each other by scent.

Sunday night I decided that Celie's fur was just too stinky, and to give her a bath. I knew she wouldn't like this, but I did it anyway. She actually took it pretty well, once the shock of being doused subsided. She ended up smelling much better...to me, anyway.

Olive clearly felt differently. She sniffed at Celie and then hissed. It was as if a complete stranger had been let into the house. Two days on, and Olive still hasn't accepted Celie. They were such good playmates...I hope I haven't screwed that up for good.

I was hoping that resolving "out loud" to blog would guilt me into keeping up with it. That was clearly not the case. I can't even complain that I haven't had time for it. Spring semester was much easier on me, and I did have a lot more time, so I have only apathy to explain it. Spring semester is now over, so I guess now is as good a time as any to try to pick up on my promise of more blogging.

Last night one of my students and his friends prepared dinner for me and Josh. They are from Saudi Arabia, and wanted to share their tradition of cooking with us. The food was good--if surprisingly familiar. I don't know if they toned it down because they were serving Americans, but it just didn't have the "exotic" flavor I anticipated. They served us arabic coffee (milder and nuttier than "European" coffee), "sugar" dates (dates so sweet that when they are dried a crust of natural sugars forms on the outside), a pineapple drink (very good and sweet), a salad, pita, hummus, baba ganoush (or baba-khalid after the chef's special recipe) carrots, broccoli, and okra in a mild tomatoey sauce, pasta, and baked chicken.

After dinner we sat and drank tea and talked. We started out talking about computers, as they are all in the computer science program here at BSC. Somehow this led to them trying to convince us that we should try to get jobs at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, which is being built in King Abdullah (Economic) City, which is being built near Jeddah on the Red Sea. Never mind that neither the city nor the university exist yet. Never mind that, according to the promotional materials, the university's emphasis will be on research, which neither Josh nor I have done for a couple of years. "If there is a will, there is a way," they say, "move to Saudi Arabia and live in our wonderful new city! It will be cheap and beautiful and you will learn to love to wear the 'Abayah'."

See, that's where I have a big problem. I don't want to wear the abayah, the traditional black robe that covers a woman from her neck to her feet when she goes out in public. "You don't have to wear it, you can do whatever you want! (But people will look at you and you will feel embarrassed and be asking for bad things to happen.)" Um, yeah. That's a problem for me. They went on to give examples of all the western women that have come to wear and love the abayah.

When I tried to explain that I see the abayah as merely a symptom of a much bigger problem--the overall attitude of the culture toward women, they did exactly what expected, and assured me that they revere women, that their religion (or culture--two of the men seemed to disagree about where these attitudes originate) requires that the husband takes care of his wife, such that she never has a need for money. What if it isn't about the money? What if a woman wants to work for the sake of being fulfilled? "She can do that! And whatever money she makes she keeps! She doesn't have to give it to her husband because her husband still has to take care of her!" A woman can be a teacher (in a girls' school), a banker (in a women's bank), a doctor (in a women's hospital).

Saudi women are restricted from being in the company of unrelated males. Neither can they go out in public alone or by car (Saudi Arabia does not issue driving permits to women). They are discouraged from pursuing careers as it might put them in contact with unrelated males. Apparently everything is built twice in Saudi Arabia--one for the males and one for the females--only sometimes the female one never gets built (as in the case of soccer arenas). I've even read that some rooms have two entrances--one for each gender.

These Saudi men echo the same platitudes I've always heard: we treat women in this way because we respect them. But the legal system belies this claim and betrays Saudis' true attitude toward women: women are not allowed to testify in court unless it is a personal matter that was not witnessed by men. Even then, the woman's testimony is not taken to be fact, as a man's is but is considered as merely providing a reasonable basis for belief or acceptance. Therefore, if any man contradicts her testimony, it is nullified. You can imagine the difficulty this presents to women who have been harmed by men.

I should note that these particular men seem to have no issue with having a woman as their teacher, and so when I say "the Saudis," I do not necessarily mean these men specifically, even though they are voicing the same dogma. I find it more than a bit ironic that these men can cry injustice at the way that Saudi Arabia is propagandized in the American media, when they seem to have been so taken in by their own propaganda.

In the end, I felt the same way that I feel whenever I talk to zealots--and with the use of the word zealot I don't mean to imply religious zealotry, but anyone who is fanatically committed to an idea. Anyone who not only refuses to entertain the opposing site of view, but seems intellectually and sometimes physically incapable doing so. I felt that no matter how adept, reasonable, and eloquent my argument, I was simply not being heard.