I'm sure I'll adjust quickly

When I get off the bus and start walking home from school, my thoughts turn to home. I tend to think about what to make for dinner, who will be home, who has what sports practice, wonder how much homework needs to be done etc.

Today, I got off the bus and wondered to myself which children would be home already.

Answer? None. That was a momentary shock.

It was reinforced when I walked into an empty house. I wonder if I'll remember tomorrow?

Laps around Logan a.k.a. Logan Run

I don't like Logan airport at the best of times, and having to go there early in the morning two days in a row just confirmed that fact for me. The two visits couldn't have been more different.

The first, an international flight for 2 unaccompanied minors, was painless. There was no one in the line at the ticket counter, we checked in right away (including all the UM paperwork), I accompanied them through security, which was hassle free, and then we just had to wait till they boarded, which was also hassle free.

The second, a domestic flight for my oldest daughter, was painful. We arrived within the suggested 90 minute early arrival and still had to sprint to the security checkpoint. We came in at one end of the desginated terminal, noted the line, and followed it. And followed it, and followed it, till we finally came to the end on the other side of the terminal. But there was an agent walking the line, assuring us we would get through the line in time to make our flight. Well she was right, sorta. We got the boarding pass twenty minutes before take-off (hence the sprint to the long security line).

But then the fun began. You see, when asked for her passport at the front of the security line, my daughter discovered she no longer had it. She must have dropped it. So, being the loving mother I am, I sprinted back down the length of the terminal to the ticket agent, only to find when I got there, that another agent had picked it up and run it out to her. So I sprinted back to try to at least say goodbye properly only to discover she'd already progressed through the first screening to the machines.

Did I mention she LOST HER PASSPORT?!
Within ten minutes of pulling it out, she lost it.

Before today, I had talked myself into being cool with her summer plans.
Now I am nervous.

And tired from Logan's run.

There's good news, good news, and bad news

Well, I think I licked those nasty bugs 'cause I've been feeling better over the last couple of days. To celebrate, I went to the gym yesterday for the first time in ages and now I hurt again (but in a good way).

I also got some excellent plotting ideas from the writing group last night - I was really kinda stuck in the concept stage, and now, I've got an idea where the story is going to go. It also clearly sets the story in the sf genre more than the social fiction/alternative chick lit/whatever that it was stuck in before. I suppose I shouldn't be that concerned about genre, but hey, let's face it, genre drives fiction sales these days - knowing your niche might be a good thing.

Bad news is, I'm up to my eyeballs in getting kids ready to fly away for summer, BBQ next week, and sending off reading list drafts (hopefully by the end of the month) - I don't have a lot of time to spare for plotting out the suggested changes, but I'm psyched to get it done, so I'm gonna steal the time from somewhere else.

Maybe I'll even have the guts to post some of it for you... maybe.

Feeding the mind (you know, laughter's the best medicine)

I've always loved this poem, and while reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland again, I was delighted not only with the poems, but also by the original drawings by John Tenniel included in my copy.

You are old, Father William

"You are old, Father William" the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head -
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."

"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door -
Pray, what is the reason of that?"

"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
"I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment - one shilling the box -
Allow me to see you a couple?"

"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak -
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life."

"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balance an eel on the end of your nose -
What made you so awfully clever?"

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said his father, "don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"

How strong is that mind/body connection?

This is my question for the week, in part, because I think my body is trying to fend off the nasty whatever that laid D out last week. I am exhausted. And it is only 2 pm.
It must be one of these little buggers who's messing with me:



From giantmicrobes

My mind is trying to tell my body to kick the bug's ass and get on with life, but my body is trying to tell my mind to direct its muscles to the bed, crawl in and spend this gorgeous day napping. I'm rooting for the mind to win this one. This week's WAY too busy with the girls going away next week, the Canada Day BBQ to prepare for, a set of drafts coming in, as well as my usual reading schedule.

We are consumers

There's no way to get around it - we're consumers - we buy and buy and buy. And I'm one of those people who actually dislikes shopping most of the time. Actually, it's not the act of looking at merchandise, trying things on, comparing prices etc., it's the other people who are doing the same thing at the same time that I mostly can't stand.

I really am rather anti-social in that way. So when D came home today and asked if I needed something to wear for the wedding this weekend, I was confused and a bit frustrated. I thought we had talked about it and decide our money was a bit too tight to afford new clothing wear, so I had dug around in the closet trying to put something together (I had found an outfit - I wasn't crazy about it, but I thought it would get me by). But then he suggested going shopping tomorrow afternoon to get something specifically wedding-like, which I totally vetoed because I HATE Saturday afternoon at the mall - anytime but Saturday afternoon, PLEASE! (On the flip side, I certainly wanted something more appropriate to wear - a quandry to be sure.)

So we went tonight, and I found a cute top to go with an already owned skirt - a compromise between the desire to wear something new and nice, and the need to watch my pennies.

But then I had to blow the equivalent of a nice outfit at the pharmacy anyway.

When oldest daughter goes off to Honduras, we don't want her to get malaria, so she'll take quinine as a prophylactic a week before she leaves, for the duration of her trip, and four weeks after - that's 11 weeks worth of medication.

I went to the pharmacy this afternoon, submitted the prescription, paid for it (was happy it wasn't too steep), took it home and thought nothing else of it. When she got home, she opened and said, 'mom, there's only four here'. Sure enough, they'd only given us enough for four weeks.

Now, when I go through the McDonalds drive through, I know enough to double check the bag before I drive away. After all, the job only pays minimum wage and anybody can work there (they gave me a job after all!), but when I go to the pharmacy, I figure I shouldn't have to double check the bag. Apparently, I'm wrong on that count.

So we go back, and the pharmacist tells us we only got a month's worth because that's all the insurance company will cover per lot and we'd have renewals for the rest.

Hello! The girl's in Honduras. She can't just hop a flight back up here to renew the prescription.

So, okay. I don't want my kid to get malaria, so I fork out full price for the second month's worth. And then when she gets back, we can get the final three weeks (and insurance will cover it again). *sigh* Good thing I was frugal on the outfit - turns out I needed that money to pay for drugs.

Having to choose between clothing and drugs - what am I, in Hollywood?

I'm Coleridge!

You are Samuel Taylor Coleridge! The infamous
"archangel a little damaged!" You
took drugs and talked for hours, it's true, but
you also made a conscious choice to cultivate
the image of the deranged poet in a frenzy of
genius. You claimed you wrote "Kubla
Khan" in an afternoon after a laudanum,
when you pretty manifestly did no such thing.
You and your flashing eyes and floating hair.
And your brilliant scholarship and obvious
genius.


Which Major Romantic Poet Would You Be (if You Were a Major Romantic Poet)?
brought to you by Quizilla

And I'm trusting these guys to get my 911 call through?

Just got an email from my phone company telling me my phone has been shipped...

... an hour and a half after the phone had already been delivered to the house.

Sheesh!

Condo living: Drawback #27

The window painters don't care that you have a splitting headache and would rather not smell paint fumes all day since that will undoubtedly aggravate it.

And the one at my house doesn't seem to care/know that the Spanish love song he is singing outside my bedroom window is off-key.

Since the windows are the old, single pane kind that let-in-cold-air-in-winter, let-in-every-smell-and-sound-outside, I can only hope they finish early and the paint dries quickly.

I've been tagged

I've been tagged by Duncan (who designed this lovely site thank you very much) with my first meme and it seems awfully appropriate that it's a book tag. So here it is:

Number of books I own

Ouch! Now this one's a sore one - we just had a 'family' discussion about the piles that are developing. Although I have five bookcases, there are still books piled on top of them (precariously), on the floor in select places, and in boxes in the attic. So I would guess that I shouldn't be counting hundreds, but have probably topped a thousand. *sigh* I love books - which is why I'm in this gig - but it sure is gonna be a pain in the ass to move all of them when we do so again. Thanks for remining me Duncan!

Last Book I Bought

Last time I bought books, I bought a few at one time, but since they were online, I can list them in the order they came, last to arrive listed first:

Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Book club book that I need to read by the end of the month.

Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson
The subtitle for this book is 'Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism'. It isn't political, but rather a study on the reasons why people identify themselves in the context of a nation and how these imagined communities sprung up out of the effects of religion, geography, ethnicity and imperialism.

Rule of Darkness by Patrick Brantlinger
The book looks at the way imperialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (the height of the British empire) affected its literature.

Last books I read

I just finished Gendered Interventions: Narrative Discourse in the Victorian Novel - by Robyn Warhol which was a bit repetitive and could have been argued in one or two well placed journal articles.

Before that, I read The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells and was delighted with the adventure story (though I kept seeing Marlon Brando as Moreau, which spoiled the effect somewhat).

I also recently finished Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, which was well written, nicely constructed, and got me thinking about all kinds of connections to other things.

5 books that mean a lot to me

(this one's real hard, in part because I'm not sure how to interpret what 'means' a lot to me - I'm going to interpret it as books that I think about alot, have enjoyed, and have reread at least once)

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkein
Not Wanted on the Voyage - Timothy Findley
The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie
1984 - George Orwell

I tag Beckler, Jim, and Jen.

The physicality of acting

Watched The Machinist this weekend, which turned out to be a really fascinating movie.

Christian Bale, who I've never been overly impressed with, impressed me in this movie, both through his acting, and the body changes he went through to do it. IMDB has some great copies of the stills: here and here that show what he looked like throughout the majority of the movie. They are downright creepy, as they are in the movie. I've never seen anyone in person look this bad - the friend with anorexia didn't even look this emaciated - and only ever seen images of people suffering from AIDS or Holocaust survivors looking this thin. I'm amazed at the body-modifying lengths Bale went to for this role (the scoop is that he lost 60 odd pounds for the role).

What impressed me even more than the body modification is the changes the character goes through within the story, changes that Bale pulls off expertly. At times, Trevor Reznik is a lovable, sensitive, humorous guy, and you can understand why the women in the movie like to talk to him. At other times, when the sleep deprivation seems to be at its height, he is the creepy kind of guy that you definitely do not want to meet in a back alley. His rage and paranoia are one thing, but when he's in the factory and at other key moments in the story, he looks downright malevolent. And then in the next scene he's this cute guy who'd you'd like to date (even if it's just once) to get to know him.

I'd never heard of this movie before it was a trailer for another (relatively) obscure movie that I watched recently, but I don't understand why. The storyline makes you think, makes you guess, confuses you, delights you, while mesmerizing you as you watch Bale interacting with the other characters (including Jennifer Jason Leigh's good performance as well). If you get the chance, I would recommend you watch this movie.

Blonde moment

I've been operating all week under the mistaken impression that tomorrow was father's day.

*wink* Good thing I found out before I spoiled any of the men in my family!

Word of the day

loquacious adj. from the Latin loquax 'to speak'
means 'very talkative; garrulous'

garrulous adj. from the Latin garrulus 'to chatter'
means 'Given to excessive and often trivial or rambling talk; tiresomely talkative.
Wordy and rambling: a garrulous speech'

[okay, words of the day]

Excited about academics!?

I'm actually pretty excited about academic-type stuff right now. Yesterday, a group of us got together to talk about a graduate student colloquium for the upcoming year. We're hoping to meet once a month to exchange papers, share the work that we're doing, and hear what other people are doing. I think it's a great idea (which is why I was a bit of a pain in the ass about bugging people to have this meeting) and we're just trying to arrange when we might meet over the summer, you know, kind of a dry run type of thing, get us up to speed before the term actually starts.

I'm looking forward to hearing/reading what other people are writing, and if I ever get around to doing some more revision on the paper I've been working on, then I'll be excited to get feedback on that too. Makes me think it's kinda cool being an academic-type person!

Second class citizen

I spent a lot of energy convincing myself to go to the gym today - I was really not feeling motivated to go, even though my energy level is totally in the toilet and could use some energetic activity to give it a boost. Finally, I convinced myself to go by promising myself I only had to go to the gym, I didn't have to commit to anything extravagant, just get in there and move.

Then I get to the gym and have to stand around for ten minutes while the "supervisor" checked that I did indeed have a membership at the school facility. He asked if I was registered for classes - which I'm not - there's none offered during summer by my department - and I told him 'no' but I'd paid money to have access. Finally I did get in, but by that time, I was so annoyed and deflated by the futility of my anger that I really didn't have a very good workout.

Now, I'm not enough of a hothead that a minor inconvenience like this will ruin my day, but as I stood there awkwardly in the entrance trying to avoid the people with legitimate cards (i.e. undergrads) trying to get past me while my card was checked, I had time to remember all the other times this kind of thing has happened at this university. This is probably the sixth or seventh time I've had problems getting into the gym - in each case, somehow, it's the registrar's fault - they eliminate all the graduate students off the approved list they send updating the gym on who's registered and who's not.

Same thing regularly happens at the library. Apparently, it's bizarre for a graduate student to want to access the library outside of registered classes, like over the summer. Hello! We're graduate students. You know, scholars in the making? Some of us actually take what we do pretty seriously and like to learn new things (i.e. read books) when we're not actually 'forced' to by classes. Yet every summer if I want to access the library while I'm not registered in classes, I have to chase around for a special letter from the dean/department head/supervisor (it seems to change every year) saying I need access. Oh, and it has to be on letterhead - email won't do.

And forget the fact that grad students who want to use the health facilities on campus not only have to buy insurance, but shell out a couple hundred extra dollars just to have access to the health clinic. On top of that, the insurance is some of the most expensive I've ever seen if you need to add spouses or dependents (which some grad students actually do have).

I'm getting tired of being the second class citizen on campus. Bad enough I'm an alien and have to run around doing a whole bunch of SEVIS stuff every term, but I get a double whammy as a grad student because the registrar continually cuts off my access to services that I've come to expect from a university.

Maybe I was spoiled at the last university I was at - as a grad student there, I was treated the same as the undergrads, if not better in some cases.

I can only assume this 'difficulty' with grad students at the registrar stems from the fact that I don't shell out $40K/yr like the undergrads to attend. That's true. I don't pay that in tuition (though I shell out about that much just to live in this place). BUT. They also get work out of me. Work that they would otherwise have to pay someone else to do. And frankly, the tuition waiver and the stipend that they give me is about equal to what they would pay someone else to teach the courses I teach. In other words, they break even.

What they're supposed to get out of supporting grad students is good PR. We're supposed to go out there and represent them at conferences (and later in the job market), showing how brilliant the students who come out of this university are. We're supposed to get great jobs and drive up their retention records. Oh, and maybe even down the road when we've made it big, we'll send a cheque to the Alumni Assoc. (Ha!) We're supposed to make the university look good. And we do. Which should count for something.

At the very least, I think I should be able to access things that I've paid for or that will help me succeed as a student. Is that asking too much?

Not again!

Just discovered that I am missing another file. Drat!

Wonder how many more I will discover missing over the next few months.

Another first

Watching Angie's soccer game yesterday, I got a good blast of sun. Now my kneecaps are sunburnt. How the hell does that happen?

New genre of fiction

I like this infernokrusher genre - where do I find an anthology?

Triptych

At writing group, the question of attraction and sexual desire was one of the big nature/nurture questions we argued (see yesterday's post).

I watched Dopamine on IFC over the weekend. (Unlike the one reviewer, I thought Sabrina Lloyd was well cast and the acting finely done.) It's a story about love, but also about our relationship to such a complex human emotion, using a computer-generated pet and a mother with Alzheimer's to explore the question. I would recommend the film.

I ran across this NYTimes article about the chemistry of romantic love, saying that in its initial stages, new love resembles several mental illnesses in its effects in the brain.

Busy blogger

Not that I've been busy blogging, but that this blogger has been busy. We finally broke down over a disastrous weekend of fighting over the one computer and purchased a second one. It's actually a bit disappointing since a new computer should be fun, and all I can think about is how much I didn't want to spend that much money. But I need it.

I know dissertations were written in the days before the computer, and I'm sure there were some wonderful dissertations produced. But those people may also have had better organization skills, because without my database of notes, I'd be totally screwed.

Why, just a couple of weeks ago, I trucked over to a nearby university to get a couple of articles. After I'd wandered around the really oogy stacks, found a non-defunct photocopier, and finally made my way home, I opened up my bag and found myself thinking that the title of one of the articles sounded familiar. Know why? 'Cause I'd already read it. At least I figured that out before I reread it and wondered why it sounded so familiar, but without that database, I wouldn't have figured it out till much later. Wasted photocopy money though.

So, I've been spending the last couple of days trying to reload (yet again!) software and backed-up files onto a computer - I think I'm at #5 for the times I've had to do this on various computers this year, that is, start all over from scratch.

It's no raving beauty of a computer, but it should do the job - and it has a warranty, which is a VERY good thing at this point in the game.

I also went to our first writing group meeting last night which was WAY COOL! We talked and talked and talked - I got home very late, but much earlier than I might have thanks to a wonderful friend's offer of a ride. I have some incredibly talented friends! Wow! There are lots of 'problems' with my chapters that we talked about, but they're not insurmountable. The story is an alternate reality kind of story where human biology (specifically reproduction) has changed. My premise is that this would change society. We had a really good discussion of what direction to take it in, and resurrected the old nature/nurture debate in trying to figure out whether biology or society would be more influential. I'm a little nervous about the story now - in part because I think I made some assumptions that I'll have to rethink - and I'm not sure that I can pull it off. But I'll give it a try. If it goes in the dustbin, I've got another one in the wings anyway.

So, busy life - but it's all good.