Well! That just feels like a big mistake

So, I was whining yesterday about how unmotivated I feel, and I decided that the best thing to do would be to push myself through to the next level.

I decided that I needed to get off my fanny and email off the second and third reading lists to their respective supervisors. I've been sitting on them for probably two weeks, hesitating to send them off because I wasn't sure they were ready, and I figured one way to shake myself out of the doldrums would be to scare myself (and the thought of actually sending them off was scaring me, hence, it seemed perfect).

Bad move.

I heard back from the first person only two hours after sending it off! - in an email with a two page attachment. She had some very good suggestions for wording the field statement part, which was excellent, since it was that part that I'd been fucking around with for the last two weeks trying to get it right and still not being satisfied with it. That was good and is easy to deal with. She also explained a bit more/better what she was looking for in the secondary source list, which was good, because now I have a clearer idea about what I need to do for it, but a bit bad because it gives me a lot more books to read - which might throw off my hoped for schedule (especially if I continue to have difficulty motivating myself - which will continue if the kind of things like the stuff to follow keeps happening).

The very first thing in her response - the thing that really was the most depressing even though I'm trying to just let it roll off and not bug me - was that she asked why I had a whole huge section of literature on my list. She said it didn't seem that I was interested in this literature, and wouldn't deal with it in my dissertation, so why was it on there? Why? WHY? Well, 'cause you told me to put it on there! You even lent me a book to help me compile that part of the list. No, I don't want to study it, but I put it on there because you told me to. AND. This is the big part. And, I spent about two solid months reading much of the material in that section - two months I could have spent reading other things.

*a wailing, gnashing of teeth, and growling ensues*

Two months (and I think that's conservative) spent on reading stuff that won't be on my list. I'm not talking an article or two, or even one book. I'm talking several books as well as many shorter pieces.

It's just depressing.

But it gets better.

Because I'm a trooper - or an idiot - take your pick - I go for a long walk, burning off some steam and return home with the plan to try to forget that I wasted so very much time on useless research and just try to focus on moving forward. What I need to do is focus on the books she's told me to go find - I don't know what books yet - I just know I have to read them. I'm an hour and a half away from the library, but I have DSL and the library has a slough of useful online databases. So, the logical thing to do is to do some research. Look up books that we have in the library, find their tables of contents, their indexes, figure out what's in them, then compile a list and physically go into the library, take them off the shelves (or order them from other libraries) and figure out if I should read them. I can do all this online too.

It sounds like a good plan, doesn't it? I thought it did.

I begin to make some progress; I'm finding stuff in the regular catalogs as well as in databases and online resources outside the university. I compile a list of about 40 books, but there are some books the university doesn't have, so I want to order them through interlibrary loan. I go to login. "Your patron privileges have been revoked" Crap! I took them the letter they needed last month, and I still got booted off. And it's 4:25 on Thursday. Offices close in 5 minutes, and most aren't open on Fridays.

But aha! I'll be sneaky. I have a faculty account as well as a student account. I'll get into the secure databases that way. "Your patron privileges have been revoked" Damn! I betcha this has something to do with getting kicked off Blackboard last week.

Yes, I seem to be persona non grata at the university these days. They don't have a record of me paying for gym privileges over the summer, so I have to carry my receipt with me at all times (yeah, I know, I'm not doing that one again!). And even then, some of the 'brilliant' work study people behind the counter are still suspicious about whether they should let me in or not.

And last week, I couldn't log on to Blackboard (the course management site for the course I'm teaching), because someone told them I was no longer working for the university. I wouldn't have minded not working for the university for the rest of the summer if it meant I still didn't have to go in and teach.

That was a pain in the ass to track down, because whoever did it, did it the Friday before the long weekend, and there was almost no one around over the weekend to fix it. Took till the next Wednesday to get back on. And of course I look like a dufus to my students because I can't get ahold of them 'cause their email addresses are all locked away on the site. As soon as I got access, I enrolled myself through my student account in my own course that I'm teaching, so at least if they decide to do this again, I'll at least have access to the email list, even though I won't be able to access the gradebook or any of the other instructor features.

But I'm kinda stuck till Monday in my research efforts. And I just realized I have yet to hear back from the other advisor - I'm not looking forward to that one.

Is this some subtle form of messaging? "Aliens go home"? Why not just send me a memo? If you don't want me here, just come right out and say it. I'm a big girl. I can take it. But right now you're just confusing me. You invited me to come here. I came from another country. I travelled 3210 miles, without a place to live at the end of the line to get here. That was faith. And you seemed to want me. You gave me an assistantship. And then you even renewed it - twice. If you didn't want me here, all you had to do was not offer me money. I would've got the hint. In fact, I would've had to leave - I couldn't have afforded to stay. But you gave me assistantships during the year, and even offered me a part time job in the summer. You're confusing me. Do you want me or not?

Makes my problems seem really rather irrelevant

So, I've been reading about the bombing in London. I'm not really gonna blog about the politics of it, and I'm not going to second guess whether the group that claims to have done it did it.

The thing that impresses me the most about all the accounts I've been reading about it is the attitude of those who have been involved, either responding to the crisis, or living through it. Londoners' attitudes have been compared to those of the Blitz, and they seem to be rallying together in a way that I'm sure is reminiscent of that previous bombing. And as commentators (particularly the British papers) have noted, they've always had the IRA to deal with.

I still however find myself feeling very remote from it all - perhaps in part because I haven't taken transit in the last couple of days and probably won't have to till next week (mostly 'cause I'm not working till then and have no need to stir from the nest of misery that's my life right now).

But I think even then I will find my attitude to my commute unchanged. It's hard to get worked up about a bunch of weirdos in some far away country maybe deciding to attack the transit system I ride, and even then, maybe attacking on the day I'm on it, and maybe on the bus I'm on. You see the odds? Whereas I've been at a station when they stopped the trains because someone was shot, and I've been on a bus where a man grabbed a woman but ran away before the cops could show up, even though he continued to make threatening gestures at her (and I think more generally at the other women on the bus as well). So, yeah, it's hard to get anxious about it. I think there's a far greater chance of my senile neighbor leaving the stove on and burning us all to a crisp in the middle of the night than me getting blown up on a subway ride.

But perhaps now that I've said that, I'm bringing such a fate upon myself.

Is that too fatalistic? Perhaps it is a bit dark. But I guess I figure there's not much that I can do about the things that happen in life other than how I respond to them. How I respond personally to the events in London is not to fear for myself, but to feel empathy for those people who are there, for those people who were injured, and for those people who had someone they care about die. I know that there are many people in London (and beyond) for whom this is a personal matter, and for them, I feel sympathy and wish them strength and the compassion of those nearest them.

I also am concerned on a more general level about the purpose of the attack - terror-ism - it is the desire to terrify an enemy, and it is that ratcheting up a notch of the terror everyone in the world feels everytime an act of terrorism is committed that I worry about. It feeds into a bunker mentality. Not always right away, but later on it does, as people continue to worry about it. At first, everyone pulls together, but then once the crisis is over, suspicion sets in. It's not just of unattended packages though, it extends to anyone acting a little weird, or maybe looking angry, or "suspicious" in some other way. And the worst of it comes when people start to be suspicious of anyone who doesn't look like them, or conversely, who looks like a terrorist (whatever terrorists look like in your dreams). That's the thing that worries me the most about these kinds of terrorist attacks. They make the world a more dangerous place for me and my kids. When everyone starts to look over their shoulder, when we start eroding civil liberties in the name of security, when ordinary people start to mistrust their neighbors and the people they meet everyday, the world gets to be a little bit scarier.

It gets scarier because when you don't trust anyone, you start just looking out for yourself. Which is a good thing (it's something that it's SO hard to get teenagers to do, or at least my teenager). But because my teen has so little worry about her own safety, she may find herself in a situation where she needs the help of a stranger. And that stranger might be unwilling to help her because he/she has retreated from society, has let the terror and suspicion get to him/her. And then my daughter suffers. To hell with society suffering. I worry about her suffering. And THAT's what I worry about whenever terror is used against ordinary people - that the world is becoming less safe not just because of the terrorists, but because of what it does to us all.

I'm in a slump

I can't seem to get any work done today... haven't really worked since the beginning of last week... at least not in any concerted manner that will move me through this program at anything but a snail's pace.

It all just seems so overwhelming right now. Too much I don't know. Too much I'm worried I need to know. Too much to read. Too much to pay attention to. I'm ready to give up. I want to give up. I want to sit on the couch and watch movies all day. I want to go out and go shopping, or visit friends, or just wander down to the nearest coffee shop (a good mile away, so 'wander' doesn't quite seem the right word). In short, I want to be doing just about anything that doesn't involve school.

Help!

Ahhh...New England in the summer

It has been raining most of the day - during the trek in to school, it was raining 'wicked haahd', which made travel difficult (and extremely soggy). You don't get rain like that on the prairies. It rains hard, but for a brief time (and usually only late in the evening or overnight), so it doesn't affect you unless you're a night owl or work overnights.

Here, this hard rain just kept coming and coming. Even with an umbrella, you're soaked quickly. Worst part today was that my sandals got so wet, and my feet inside them, that my feet started sliding around in them, and within about three blocks, I had a wicked blister on one foot - and this is from sandals that usually are the most comfy things around. Ouch. Takes all the fun outta meeting a friend on Newbury Street and having lunch together, though we made it a long lunch and by the time we'd dried out, the rain had let up a bit and we could walk without being entirely soaked. The good food and great company made up for the soggy weather though.

Now the weekend is over though...

Overall, this long weekend was one of the better weekends I've had since starting this doctoral program. In part, it's likely been good because I did virtually no work whatsoever - which of course makes today a day for a lot of work to get done.

The Canada Day bbq went off fairly well I think. I enjoyed myself (more than last year for sure), and I think if I play with things next year, I can get it down to spending even less time in front of the grill and enjoying myself even more. Most everyone seemed to enjoy themselves - there was one person who was really tired and left early, and another who felt sick (not my fault, honest!), and maybe a couple of dates who felt a bit out of place, but there's not much you can do about that after you've chatted them up for a bit.

We had a birthday party the next day to go to - which was fun - I think if I start hanging around with this family much more, they'll have to consider adoption, but if they don't mind, I don't mind! No, really, it was a really pretty neat party, and I haven't gone to a kid party that I haven't hosted in a long time, so it was nice to be on the other side of the fence for a while.

We talked about spending Sunday lying around the pool and then watching movies, but decided we'd be more active and drove out to Mt. Monadnock for a bit of hiking. My hips still hurt! We decided (perhaps a touch foolishly) to pick the straight up, straight down route up the mountain - on the map, we went up White Dot and down White Cross, which are apparently the most direct way up and back the 3,165 ft. elevation gain. The trail is rated 'moderately steep' which means it's not supposed to go above a 45 degree angle slope, but there are a couple of places where it exceeds that. And not many that go below about 25 - it's pretty much a straight scramble up what is likely a stream/waterfall bed during runoff. We've been to the White Mountains area of New Hampshire, which is much more scenic, but also a little farther away, so we decided to try Monadnock (and daughter 2 was excited to hear we'd gone to it since she'd been there with the school last year). Much more energetic day than staying home by the pool though!

Yesterday, we drove almost out to Rhode Island to a 4th of July bbq (sure, why not hit both holidays, right?) though we came back a bit early because we (well, not so much me) needed to get ready for a busy week ahead. The traditional kickball game was unevenly matched, but we had fun with it (even though I apparently can't catch a ball to save my life - something the other team worked very hard to exploit by kicking it toward me each time!)

But now it's back to work.

Happy Canada Day!

I'm taking a short break from prepping food for the BBQ to say Happy Canada Day to everyone (whether you're Canadian or not).

In honor of the day, I'm including a brief interview with the International Canadian Hide and Seek team. (Apparently, some people will believe almost anything a Canadian tells them - our reputation comes in handy sometimes)

And my favorite Molson commercial - Office Glen.

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.

REALLY freaking hard!

The newest protocol for the comprehensive exams has replaced the proposal (traditionally about 12-15 pages, though some people have exceeded 30!) with the "field statement". Why? Well, for one thing, they probably don't want to read those long proposals anymore, but even more disturbingly, because a field statement leaves them far more room to maneouver in asking questions. If your field is Victorian Literature, for example, any text that could be considered Victorian literature is fair game, as is any of the major critical approaches to those texts.

Big area! Really. Freaking. Big.

Okay, so here's where it stands: they decide to make this change this year. Not next year, for the class of smart kids. This year. When I'm the one who has to try to pass these exams.

Being a guinea pig profoundly disturbs me. It makes my innards feel like I just went off a cliff.

At least I won't set the bar too high for anyone who follows!

So, okay, I've got to deal with this change, and although I think it spells bad news for me, I'll have to suck it up and deal with it, right/eh? My problem is that I took a stab at the field statement this weekend. Now usually, my problem with writing stuff is that I don't have anything intelligent to say, or that I don't actually understand the stuff that I'm supposed to be writing about. I've spent the last eight or nine years trying to fill up page requirements!

For the field statement, it goes one further. I have to summarize the entirety of a theoretical field, or a century (and more) in 250 words.

If you haven't had to word count lately, to give you an idea of what 250 words is, go to Word (or another word processing program), open a new document, and start writing about your favorite subject - Star Wars, gardening, scuba diving, soccer, poetry, photography, comics, you name it - stop at half a page (about the equivalent of ten minutes of typing, depending on your speed). Now give it to an expert, someone who gets paid based on the subject matter you wrote about.

Did you cover everything having to do with your subject? No? What do you mean no? There's too much to say? Posh! You should be able to encompass everything within that field in a half a page. What? No, it is not a ridiculous request! Easy-peasy. What? Have I ever done it? Well, no, but there's no reason why it can't be done. Such is the rationale.

I've written for the newspaper - I know how to be succinct (no, don't look to my blogging for conciseness - here's where I get to cut lose and yabber away), but this?

This is really freaking hard!

I have arrived!

I have officially joined the ranks of the neurotic and insecure doctoral student! Well, at least that's what I'm calling it.

I had the strangest experience yesterday morning. I dreamt that a professor (who I'll probably never see again) had me (and my family - that was odd) come over to his house for dinner. [Not that odd, it does occasionally happen with people who you work closely with.] But during the course of the evening, he asked me what my fields were for the comprehensives and I was trying to articulate them, thinking on my feet, and having the sense that for the first time, I was trying to clearly spell out what it was that I was doing. Okay, so the weird part was, I'm telling him this in my dream and I wake up thinking the rest of what I was saying. No clear transition - one moment I'm talking in my dream, the next, I'm awake and thinking about the comps.

Now, there's something just a little bit creepy about waking up thinking the comps. Let alone the freakiness of dreaming about it - I've dreamt about tests before, but never about the actual content of what I study.

So, I was really a little weirded out by this experience, thinking that I'd finally stepped off the edge into the gorge of absolute academic geekiness but then I talked to two other students who have survived the comps and they told me they experienced the same thing! One even starting keeping a notebook at the side of the bed for that reason.

So I guess I've arrived. Where it is that I am, I still do not know. All I know is that I'm in good company!

Sheesh!

See that date? May 25th. The twenty-fifth day of May. June is only a week away.

Now, traditionally, in northern parts of the continent, May is heralded as the beginning of spring, with the ritualistic doffing of clothing accompanied by the first stirrings of sun worship.

However, something terribly wrong is happening this year. There's a hush at the swimming pools and beaches that remain empty of visitors, the Swimco sales staff nervously peer out their windows, hoping someone, anyone, will enter the store, and even the old ladies with their stands of petunias and tomatoes are wondering where there customers are.

What has happened? Where are the spring celebrations? Have the terrorists declared war on the celebratory return of life and greenery to the region? Has Bill Gates finally taken over not only the virtual world, but the natural one as well, painting everything that godawful Microsoft blue?

No one knows.

All I know is that I was wearing my winter coat and gloves today and still felt cold, wet and miserable.

At least Star Wars last night was cool!

Boredom

I'm getting tired of reading today - but with the rain and no car, there's not much else that I feel justified in doing, so I'm still slogging at it. And I hate going out in the rain. But I wish I had something really kick-ass interesting booked for this week to look forward to. I do next week, but not this one. So I've been rather distracted and find myself thinking about other things when I should be reading.

I was thinking about how much I miss the movie afternoons we were doing last term - we went through a Christopher Guest phase with Waiting for Guffman, Spinal Tap, and even The Princess Bride - and then I opened my email (it's been piling up over the last few days) and found this wonderful tidbit from a friend:

From Salon.com:
Ron Wood on the Rolling Stones' most "Spinal Tap" moment: "We were doing drugs in the dressing room [at a concert in the early '80s]. Suddenly the tour manager stuck his head around the door and said, 'The police are here!' We all panicked and threw our drugs in the toilet. Then Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland walked in." (Guitar World magazine via Rush & Molloy)

Just a series of associations relevant for a thirty-something (I can still say that!) from movie watching last month back through one of my favorite bands in the 80s... and please note: I said, ONE, not THE ONE!

Happy Victoria Day!

Yeah if you had today off - celebrate! (whatever you're supposed to celebrate on Victoria Day - a dead queen for a dead political affiliation... but whatever)

Good thing is you have the day off! I on the other hand worked today - very early - ugh! But I get next Monday off, so I'll hang in there till then.

I've been a bad blogger, I know, I know... and right now I'm just in a funk even though I'm also pleased. I'm pleased because we reformatted the hard drive on this things and it's working better now - knock on wood - and in a funk because although I backed up everything - or thought I had - I can't find one file... one single solitary file... which is very weird, and if I don't ever find it, it'll take me about four hours to reconstruct it. Which isn't so bad, but I'm behind yet again - in part because I now have a fabulous and comfy new bed (which makes that getting out of bed to work in the morning even harder now!) which required an entire rearrangement of the bedroom/study to accommodate it (and we have LOTS of papers and books that had to be shuffled out and then back in) but the other part is just 'cause it seems like all of a sudden everybody needs to be driven everywhere and all kinds of non-student things seem to be demanding my attention - which is a fabulous break from the academic stuff, but tends to screw with my reading schedule. Oh! and I went to this entirely mind-numbing eight hour meeting last week that amazed me in that I had never truly experienced hypnosis before - took me two beers just to feel normal again after that one - yikes!

So you take the good with the bad when you're getting by, right?
*sigh* but I will be a better blogger... soon...

In the meantime, check out two new blogs on my blogroll - both by friends and fellow lit geeks who have nothing better to do than blog (um, yeah, sure): Jumbotron6000 and this is your brain on grad school.

Twinkle twinkle little star

Six + hours on buses/train today.
Man! Do I wish we had a second car.

Fits and Starts

My life feels a bit unreal right now. I think it's because I'm doing things that I haven't done in years - liking it - but have got out of the habit of doing, so it feels a bit odd. I actually did very little studying this weekend. In fact, I've done very little reading for about a week.

What have I been doing instead?

Well, on Thursday afternoon, I drove up to New Hampshire to meet with a woman who's working on her PhD in educational psychology. She's researching and writing about Americanization programs in the early part of the century. I met with her because I answered an ad for an academic writing group, and even though most people would only join such a group if they were already working on the dissertation, I thought it would be worth checking out a group while I'm still slogging through the comps proposals. Of course, now that the comps proposals have been scrapped, I have no need to write anything till at least next spring, which makes joining the group a bit of a moot point. But her chapter that I read was very interesting, and we found a lot of points of intersection to talk about. And she gave me some great feedback about a paper that I've been working on sporadically for the last year. Gave me a good reason to get off my ass and do some work on it too - which is part of the reason why writing groups work! Don't know if we'll keep working together (right now, the group is pretty much non-existent with just the two of us), but I enjoyed hearing about someone else's experience in academia - particularly because it was from someone in a different discipline and at a different institution.

Friday was just messed up because I spent most of the day tagging along behind D - I certainly didn't expect the day to go to waste the way it did.

Saturday was cool though 'cause I went with some friends to see a soccer game. The Revolution were playing D.C. United, and although the game was "lacklustre" (good word use, R) I enjoyed myself immensely. I had intended to go home and get a whole bunch of reading done in the evening, but one of the kids ended up grounded by the end of the night, and the circumstances surrounding that grounding made it pretty much impossible for me to concentrate on reading that night.

Then on Sunday, some good friends introduced us to a great little pub in JP - I had steak & eggs, something I haven't eaten since the last century, so it was about time I had some - and they were fabulous. We had a good time, though I felt a little distracted by all the crap the night before, so I'm afraid I wasn't terribly good company. Then you'd think I'd go home and read, but instead I spent the night making room for our new bed - we still have to arrange for delivery, but we found a really good place to get it from, and we're hoping to get it brought by in the next couple of days.

Weird part about the whole weekend is that I did very few student kind of things, which is something I haven't done in a long time... or at least feels like a long time.

But now I need to get back to work!

Running around

It's been a busy couple of days and the weekend is going to be fairly busy as well. I knew this would happen once D finished all his exams, 'cause there's been a bunch of family- house-related stuff we've needed to do, so that's part of it. But it also is just a bunch of things kinda coming together at the same time.

Which always makes me a little edgy, even if I'm enjoying myself, because I worry that I'm going to fall even farther behind than the position I already seem to be slipping into.

I'm also worried about when I'll actually get around to writing these exams, because I didn't get anything remotely like what I wanted for teaching assignment this fall. In fact, if you had given me the exact opposite of what I wanted, you'd be accurately describing my schedule. I asked for: two days a week, one course, no 8 am. I got: three days a week, two courses, and 8 am. I mean, really, if you're not going to pay any attention to my preferences, why ask for them?

The three day a week - two courses schedule is also for a new course that I've never taught before. AND, of the three new courses being introduced this year, I indicated I would be interested in teaching two of them. Guess which one I got assigned to though?

So maybe I'll have to be squeakly wheel, because teaching two sections of a brand new course three days a week will not be conducive to writing my exams as I plan to in the fall. That is, if I actually get to the point where I could realistically write these exams by then.

Ouch!

Have you ever gotten a shock from a piece of electronic equipment? A stereo, a television etc.?

My walkman just shocked me... through the headphones. I wonder if extra bits of electricity travelling between my ears is really terribly good for me?

I'm developing an allergy to health

or at least, to making health care appointments. I've just spent a half hour on the phone trying to book immunizations for oldest daughter when she goes to Honduras.

Last time I booked immunizations, I did it for all three children at one time. I made one phone call, which took about ten minutes, directly to the Health Clinic.

This time, I had to call the PCP, the Travel Clinic, the insurance company, and then the PCP again, to find out where she needed to go, make the appointment, find out if we're covered for it, and request a physician referral authorizing the immunizations.

Can you match the story to the country?

I suppose if I ever need a team of highly trained specialists to put my body back together after some horrific accident, that I will be grateful for the thousands of dollars I'm spending on insurance. But for the little stuff, it's an effing pain in the ass to stay healthy.

Mom's late

which actually doesn't happen too often, but I realize I'm two days behind on blogging Mother's Day.

That's not to say I won't mention it.

Got a lovely email (that I just opened today - give you three guesses why I haven't checked email in two days - first two don't count) from a colleague that said that being a mom and a grad student was amazing, wonderful etc. (to which I agree, of course).

What I didn't say in my reply is that I don't know that it's that great, since I suspect that I do neither job terribly well.

Regardless of how well I do it, my family was appreciative on Sunday, and the girls even managed to limit their fighting to a mere ten minutes each in honor of my (rapidly diminishing) sanity. As punishment, I made them go with me to see Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (which I saw for the second time), though at least one enjoyed it, so it wasn't much of a punishment. I can't recall ever seeing any other movie twice while it was in the theatre and I think this movie thus has the honor of being a Michele's first. Congratulations HHGTTG!

Relative Pleasure

No, not the pleasure of relatives, but the relativities of pleasure.

The first soccer game of the season that I was able to get to was this morning in the wind, rain, and cold. By the time I'd been there for twenty minutes, I was thoroughly chilled. Kiddo managed slightly better since she was the one running around.

We decide on hot chocolate when we get home, but find that there's none left in the house, so we embark on the experiment of making it the old fashioned way - from chocolate. Wow! I have never tasted such a delicious, creamy mug of hot chocolate. Hang the extra time it takes, I think I'll only drink real hot chocolate from now on. And being thoroughly chilled and soaked made the warmth of the house and the drink that much more heavenly.

And oldest child reports that she thinks she did well on her SAT exam this morning, even though she ran out of time for the writing sample. I'm glad she feels positive about it - now we just have to wait to see if her feeling matches her score.

Metal

Angela got braces today. She's not thrilled, but she did admit that it's not as bad as she thought it would be.

Don't get excited

about this blog post 'cause I have nothing interesting to say. I am back on my laptop again - the one I thought was entirely pooched - and which I'm still really, really leery about using 'cause I know it's gonna crash on me again.

[nice computer, *stroke* nice computer]

It was a month ago that I first took it in to be 'repaired', just after that conferencing spree, and then they brought it back, and then in crashed again. At that point, I stopped using it and spent a day setting up a profile for myself and transferring all my software and files over to D's computer which I've been using since then. But last night, he brought it back from a final go round to the IT guys and they can't find a single thing wrong with it. I suppose when it freezes up suddenly in the middle of a sentence, it is my imagination? I don't think so! A bit like taking your car to the mechanic and he can't get it to make that godawful sound it makes everytime YOU drive it...

Most annoying part is getting used to this keyboard again. Mine is set up with shortcuts for äccénts, but they're keyed through the " key, which means I need to differentiate between an accent and a " - I have to hit the space bar after entering a quotation mark if I want to quote somebody rather than accentuate the next letter. Most other computers don't have that shortcut, and it's always an adjustment moving from one to another (not that I don't love the accent shortcut - I do, and wouldn't change the keyboard set up for the world).

If you made it to the end of this boring and really inconsequential post - congratulations! You're ready to sit through the most boring B&B lecture conceivable!

On a not so boring note - I did one of those getting-to-know your friends things the other day and sent it to people who I haven't heard from in a while (or who I'm pretty sure I've never sent one of them to) and got some great responses - it was wicked cool to hear from people far away... and I learnt something about my friends too. And okay, I'll admit it - brown is not boring - but for the record, I've always thought it was a good school - don't confuse me with my offspring!

Is Spring actually here?

In a supersitious effort to spur on the full-blown arrival of spring - it's been kinda here one day gone the next for the last month - I started digging in the garden today. I didn't get far - there's an awful lot of weeds and crap in there, but at least it looks like someone is taking care of it, which hopefully means that the idiots who do the landscaping around here will realize that and stay out. [Last year, they came in and ended up pulling out all the alysum when they trimmed one of the bushes, which really pissed me off, since I was having problems coaxing it to grow in the first place]

I'm hoping it will be more successful than last year - though I'm not feeling super enthusiastic about it like I did last year. I'm hoping the simple act of working on it will get me excited about it again. Last year, I only got a couple of things out of it, and the one thing I was so proud of growing - a green pepper plant - had its only fruit eaten by an animal - I can only assume one of the squirrels that my neighbor feeds, and thus encourages to hang around the house. Grrrrr.

I also started peppers and tomatoes from seed in the house - I haven't done this in ages, and often haven't had success with it, but I figure it's worth a shot - I can always buy bedding plants if mine won't grow. I don't doubt that I know what I'm doing, but our place really is quite dark, and I don't have a good window that gets more than a few hours of sunshine every day, so I'm not holding my breath about the seedlings. I'm also chalking up the relatively poor performance of the garden last year not only to the fact that it is under a tree (so not a lot of sun) but also because I was still on the learning curve of what and when to grow things in New England.

And if you come to my house and see nothing but some spindly, pathetic plants growing by the back door, please be kind enough to not laugh in my face, okay?

Pretending to be all grown up

First day of summer semester.

I already have developed a disliking for the class. Mostly because it's at 8 am. If you know me from real life, you know I don't like mornings. I do them, but I don't like it.

Youngest daughter said I looked like a teacher this morning, and since the look matches what I was supposed to be doing, I figured that was a good thing. I asked her, "If I told you to do your homework looking like this, would you do it?" She said "yes". Perhaps I'll need to keep this outfit on till she gets home, since I might need to tell her that when she gets home.

Last time I taught summer upperclassmen, it went really well... much better than teaching freshmen during summer, so I'm hoping for a repeat. It is a bit weird however that all my class are the same major and they all have the same schedule this summer. I've already been told that they won't come to my office hours since they have class then. I'm thinking that's just fine with me...

I also had a 'request' from one of the students that I do what all their other instructors 'might' do this summer and give them a week off in the middle of the term. Then they could just make up the week at the end of the term. Nuhuh! I am in no mood to spend an extra week on this class, particularly feeling the way I am now - that the break between last term and this was waaaaay too short! I know I had almost two weeks, but that was still too short. I was looking forward to the month off between summer and next fall and damned if I feel like giving it up because some other instructors all decide they don't have lives. I mean really, if all the other instructors jumped off a bridge, do you think I would too?

Blackboard is forcing me to use a new user ID and account now with my courses, which is a bit annoying, because now I have two different email addresses to keep track of, and I know I'm gonna forget one of the passwords sooner or later. Why did they give me one email address (as a student) if they were just going to force me to use a different one (as an instructor)? And why now, three years later, is it suddenly a problem? I tell you, the right hand has no clue what the left hand is doing in this place (and it's not just the IT department either... don't get me started about student ID numbers...)

Coffee!

thanks to my wonderful partner, we now have coffee! and it's a very funky space-agey looking coffee machine that now matches my cappuccino maker - yeah for coffee!

Ghetto coffee

I arose from bed, dressed, wandered downstairs and into the kitchen. Filled the coffee pot with water, measured out coffee, inserted water and coffee into the machine. Pressed the button. Sat down. Stared vacantly into space, trying to remember what needed to be done today. Remembered. Gradually became aware that the beloved gurgling sounds and fragrant aroma of coffee brewing were not coming from the kitchen. Walked into kitchen. Turned machine off, then on again. Checked breaker. Turned machine off and on again. Plugged machine into another outlet. Stared at empty pot with something like incredulity. It gradually dawned on me. The coffee maker isn't working. But I want coffee. I like coffee in the morning. I need coffee in the morning. Making coffee usually requires a machine. I want some coffee. The machine that would usually make my beloved coffee isn't working. Which means no coffee. I would really like some coffee this morning. But wait, all the machine really does is heat the water and pump it through the grounds. I really, really want coffee this morning. There are other ways to heat water and pour it through grounds. They involve waiting. I don't want to wait. I want coffee. I hate instant coffee. I hate waiting. But I hate instant coffee more. I turn on the kettle. Eons later, I finally have a cup of brewed coffee. Where's that coupon for 20% off my next purchase at Linens and Things?

Game day

today was game day - I did pretty much nothing that had to do with studying, which was a really welcome break - I got a chance to see how the other side lives between Friday night book club and Saturday all day pretend-I'm-not-insane-going-to-grad-school-with-a-family relaxing, not working kind of thing.

Went to the North Shore to pick up friends from home, train, home, then for lunch (very! good), then the original plan was for tennis, but since it was raining buckets, we opted for pool instead. Driving home, I tried to recall the last time I'd played pool, and I'm not sure I've ever actually played in MA before... so it's been a while.

I like the game, but as with most other games, I suck at it (goes with the job description when you're a klutz). I know what I need to do, but still tend to not be able to pull it off. The worst part for me is a power shot - I tend to back off on the follow through and dip the cue tip down at the last moment, which of course, tends to make balls fly into the air. I hate breaking because I'm so bad at it - the balls end up looking like a couple of city kids wandered into a redneck bar and are all clustering together for protection.

But I got talked into breaking. I dubbed my performance "the flying scratch" because the cue ball hit the 1, flew up into the air, and straight into the left corner pocket - didn't even come back down onto the table. Looked like I'd been aiming to sink the cue ball into that corner pocket the whole time. Wish I could drop a basketball that beautifully!

Weird part was, it musta been some kind of bad omen, 'cause the next three plays all scratched, and, the player who followed me scratched three turns in a row. Weird.

Came home, hoping the man had got enough studying done to go out, but not. Instead, we watched the two youngest play chess (and dropping hints in the form of timely reminders about how players can move, strategy and the rules of the game). They played a pretty close game, though middle one made a few safety moves that cost her the edge she otherwise might have had. Then the youngest and I played scrabble. She gave me a run for my money until I triple-worded "quarts" and then "quiz" off the same corner. But it was a close game.

Nice day.

Slip sliding away

This morning I was just in a bit of a bored-kind-of-funk because I'd finished a couple of little projects and was wondering which of the bazillion things I should tackle first on my to do list (something that always makes me a little wooly in the head).

Now I'm just in a funk - a little pissed off/a little depressed about it all.

The $300 cheque in the mail didn't even cheer me up.

Good thing I didn't run into my friend (even though I was supposed to see her today) 'cause then she woulda had two grouchy people come across her path...(though if I had seen her, I probably wouldn't have been grouchy, so I guess it would be a moot point). My only enjoyment right now is guessing who it was she passed in the hall.

R - if it's who I think it is, that's just his usual look!

Trying to actually use my brain today

My online bookgroup started a discussion about whether place can be character. The thread began when one of the members heard an author's talk (Geraldine Brooks) in which the author said she thinks of place as a character when she researches/writes.

So far, so good. But of course a couple of people objected to this statement, the most succinct objection was: "Setting is a character. Plot is a character. Who really needs characters any more? She shouldn't be trying to write novels unless she knows the difference."

It occured to me that the distinction between actor and actant in Greimas's 'actantial model' might be useful, so this is what I posted:

I wonder if it might help to think of A.J. Greimas's model of actants as a way of having your cake and eating it too.

Greimas differentiates between actants and actors. Actants are figures or types, like hero, or villain, or princess, or troll... (he developed the theory in response to Propp's work with fairytales). Actants are what drives the action - think of fairytales - the king demands that his sons perform an act, which starts the story off (and usually the youngest one is the only one who is successful). When they meet an old crone/wise woman/sage and receive a magical talisman, that's another actant. The actant is a role or a type and whatever it does, it moves the story forward.

Actors on the other hand are individual incarnations of these roles. Thus, actors can fulfill several actant roles.

In this model then, couldn't place fulfill an actant role? If you think of fairytales again, say Hansel and Gretel, the witch's house fulfills an actant role as a temptation. If Hansel and Gretel hadn's stopped to eat the house, then they wouldn't have gotten caught, and the story would be a rather dull one about children wandering around in a forest. The house isn't a character, since it isn't internally motivated to tempt the children, but by acting as a temptation, it drives the narrative forward.

It doesn't just work for fairytales either. Think of the house in _Amityville Horror_, or the Congo in _Heart of Darkness_; without those specific places, the narrative would unfold very differently, would it not?

In this model, characters are still characters, but it is still possible for a place to play a role that's more important than just simply backdrop (however beautifully written or exotic that backdrop might be).

Just wondering...

What do you think?

One more thing to add to the list...

...of things I suck at:

Bowling

Sin City

Okay, so this movie is stuck in my head, even though I watched it last night and that usually means it was a good movie ('good' at least in a 'makes michele think' kind of way). So if you haven't seen it (and it's been out for a while, so you should've already) don't read 'cause there might be spoilers, yadda, yadda etc. 'nuff said.

Stylistically, I thought of Sky Captain and the World of Tommorrow - though the acting in this one was better, probably in part because the effects were created in the editing studio after shooting on actual sets as opposed to against a blue screen, and Hulk in the attempt to replicate the comic/graphic novel structure. I even found myself comparing the gritty black and white 'traced' aesthetics of this film with the brilliant-over-the-top-color of Dick Tracy (yeah, I know that's going back a bit).

The structuralist in me *gasp! strucuralist!?* was fascinated with the representation of the epidodic nature of comics/graphic novels in the movie. Hulk used multi-pane windows to indicate concurrent activity, which closely replicates the actual structure of the comic book genre, but Sin City used an episodic, temporally overlapping series of narratives to express the same thing. This second strategy does produce a sense of confusion in the viewer momentarily (particularly when Kevin (re)appears in the Nancy narrative, but then doesn't threaten anyone), but its advantage is that it creates a disconnect between scenes that, although belonging to different story lines, would otherwise be juxtaposed and seem therefore to be related to each other in a concurrent telling of the disparate storylines.

The other thing about the structure/form of the narrative that fascinated me was the jarring proximity of the hard-boiled detective story kind of narration (complete with voice-over) and the fantastical elements of the story (Kevin's activities and then his ability to survive those same activities when they are enacted upon him by someone else) See? Not a complete spoiler there...

Then there was the pretty much entirely unrealistic storyline about Oldtown. I'm sorry, but I find it hard to believe that if women had complete control over prostitution, they would continue to engage in it. Aside from money, where might be the attraction in it? And if these women were so strong and powerful, would they not be able to invent other ways of using that to their (financial) advantage? Or are we to believe that the women of Oldtown are some subset of women who like walking around half naked - all the time - and being paid to have sex? Don't they ever just feel like being a little less Amazonian at times? Do they go to the grocery store like that? And since when did all hookers have such tight, perfect bodies? And skills? you know, like bow skills...

Maybe I'm just having problems with it, not so much because it is unrealistic, but because it just strikes me as another example of male fantasy, which, let's face it, drives the whole movie. The only reason anyone takes on corruption in Basin City is because they're horny for women (I don't count the prostitutes as taking on corruption since they've coopted it into their scheme of turned heads), not for some altruistic meaning. That's why the scene where Hardigan saves little 11 year old Nancy has to be the first in the movie, otherwise, after seeing all those other men go ga-ga over scantily clad women and embark on a killing spree, Hardigan's altruism 'an old man's life for a little girl's' just would get icky, looking like the pedophillic accusations that he is 'falsely' accused of in the narrative. After all, the relationship that starts so innocently ends up less so, particularly when he repeats his maxim, changing it to accomodate a grown-up, curvy, exotic dancer Nancy, 'an old man's life for a young woman's'.

And yes, I know that some of this has to do with the conventions of the genre - both comic/graphic novel and the detective story or vice and crime. Like I said, it made me think, stuck with me, got me thinking about other movies that do the same thing different ways or different things in the same way. Overall, money well spent.

While you're procrastinating doing something else

you might be amused at the folowing: bubble wrap (manic mode is particularly amusing) and an old but good joke updated and appearing particularly relevant these days.

(thanks to R for always sending me these great little bits of electronic amusement that perk up my day!)

I hurt

The first basketball game of the season took place yesterday.

In the sun.

Today was a day for falling in love

No, I'm not looking at anyone in particular, and yes, I'm in love with my husband.

What I was thinking that today was one of those kind of days when you could fall in love with a new city. Yeah, I know I've lived here almost three years already, but it still feels like a new city - I suppose when you have your head stuck in books all day, it takes a bit longer to notice your surroundings.

The air was crisp but soft - not biting-crisp like winter (which always reminds me of my childhood) or the hazy, washed out heat of summer (like when we first arrived here in the middle of a heat wave), but a just-right temperature and clarity that made the colors of the Charles River absolutely vibrant. Crossing the river everytime I go into the city is one of the few things that make the hour and a half long trek worth it... and today it was worth every minute of it. I watched the downtown skyline go by above a brilliant blue river dotted with dazzlingly white sailboats and thought "Today is the kind of day that could make you fall in love with this place".

That is, you could fall in love with it if you were the kind of person who wasn't still stuck in some kind of pathological limbo state where you vacillate between missing the old place and worrying about having to move yet again before too long and not wanting to get attached to the current place if you've just got to leave anyway, dreading the idea of having to perhaps start all over again another time.

If you weren't that kind of person, today was the kind of day that could make you fall in love with a city like this one.

Better sleep solutions?

We're buying a new bed... not this moment (though I am bidding on a cool headboard on ebay and I'm wheening!), but very soon. Maybe a good night's sleep is what I really need... I think that the bed we have right now has been taken apart and moved too many times and is falling apart.

(It did make an awfully nasty noise at one point... so nasty, I found myself actually surpised that I wasn't lying on the floor!)

You know, there's some mattresses out there that cost more than my car's worth... but man are they comfy! We also looked at king size beds at one point... but they we measured out the space it would take in our room, and there really wasn't room for anything else if we did that! So we'll have to stick to something smaller for now - too bad - king size are downright luxurious to roll around in.

But since the computer crashed multiple times yesterday, it may come down to a choice between sleep (buying a bed) and work (buying a new computer)... yeah, yeah, I know which one I should choose!

Vacation

I need a vacation. I'm so tired of working.

I've had two people in the same number of days tell me that I'm not looking or acting like myself lately.

And I know they're right. I feel like some kind of bizarre reading-machine that just takes in and takes in and takes in, compiling, and collecting little bits of information, collating them and filing them away into little corners where they'll likely be lost in a confusing mass of undifferentiated words and phrases all jumbling around in the back of my brain like the last apples in a barrel. And yet the stack of things to still be pumped into the reading-machine just keeps growing and growing because it seems almost impossible to pin down what is necessary and what isn't in the pile and I just keep reading and reading and wondering if it's really all worth while. After all, what really is it all for? It's not like I'm doing a degree in something useful, say, like, dentistry, where I know I'll come out with a job in the end.

Q: What do they call the guy who finishes last in dental school?
A: Dentist.

Can't say they same for all my studying - it all feels pretty futile.

Yesterday I managed to forget about being a student for a couple of hours, and it was like a weight came off my shoulders. I felt like a human being instead of a reading-machine, if just for a while. Wish I could get more of that.

If you're a PhD student and were depressed by the earlier post...

...then you might not want to read this. Then again, it might cheer you up in ways that knowing depression is endemic to graduate school didn't.

Shades of cockroaches scurrying through my office come to mind as I read this article in the chronicle about office space in the humanities.

At first its all "oohs" and "aahs" and then the running and screaming starts

Imagine my delight at seeing my husband bring my computer home last night from servicing and turning it on! It's alive!

Then imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth when it crashed only an hour into working with it this morning.

It's as if my computer has gone one better than virus, and has some kind of strange electronic cancer that just keeps metastasizing. I got rid of the last hard drive because it was supposed to have been the source of the problem, but it keeps coming back... like a cancer, or malaria... or ex-husbands...

(actually the last one was just a really bad dream... a sort of marital version of The Handmaid's Tale's reproductive dystopia where everyone was forced to stick with their first choice...)

Not about me (for a change)

Oldest daughter is going to Honduras this summer, but sometimes I think I have to do just as much work to get her there as she does (I know this isn't true 'cause she's done some amazing things to have this opportunity, but it just sometimes feels like it). Biggest problem right now is getting her to the training tomorrow at the same time as another kid needs to be in another place... do all parents of more than one child eventually run into this problem? I'll figure it out, but it's annoying.

I'm also a little nervous (okay, sometimes, really nervous) about her going. My nervousness factor went WAY up when she handed me the list of current immunizations she should have. Yellow fever? Rabies vaccine? Yipes!

Why is it that I'm getting the willies when she doesn't seem to even notice? My guess is it's that sense of invicincibility all teenagers seem to have. Thing is, the older I get, the greater the number of times my body lets me down, and I start to realize how fragile it can be... even when I revel in its strength. I suppose when you're young, your body hasn't betrayed you often enough for you to start to distrust it. Hence, I'm the one who's not sleeping at night.

So, she's not totally sure what she'll be doing with the team - she's got the equivalent of two textbooks worth of stuff to read, so hopefully she'll know by the time she reads all of it (and before she gets there!). Sounds like a fabulous opportunity regardless of what she's working on. And I'm sure we'll see some significant changes in our daughter when she gets back at the end of the summer, just as we did after she came back from Colorado last summer.

But I still get a little nervous about it everytime I think about her going.

Hmmm...come to think of it, this entry really was about me anyway.

Getting by...

Still don't know if it will be possible to resuscitate my computer.

Managed to rip a hole in my finger at school - how do you injure yourself doing English, anyway? And no, it's not a paper cut, it's a hole.

Good conversation with the supervisor for one of my comps areas - went just about how I expected, but not as bad as I dreaded... I think that's a good thing.

Newsflash to other NEU doctoral students reading! New comps proposals: 500-750 words.

That's TOTAL for all three areas.

Thank god! 'cause I'm not near as prolific as some people...
... well, at least as far as writing goes...

Depressed

My computer is busted again. Obviously the problem last time wasn't the hard drive like IT guys said since a new hard drive is also having same problems as old one.

My sorrow knows no bounds.

CEA Conference

Getting to Indianapolis was a breeze - no delayed flights, and thanks to some careful planning (and the need for only 3 rather than 4 days of clothes) no bags to check and have opened during a security check.

(Okay, so I know these people are 'professionals' and all (I use that term loosely) but the idea of someone digging through my clothes and other personal items behind the scenes just creeps me out. If they gotta open my bag, I'd rather they did it at the security checkpoint where I can see them.)

My first thought as the bus started travelling from the airport into the city was that the place reminded me of a cross between Regina and Swift Current. The feeling faded a bit as I got closer to downtown, but the city never transcended that small-prairie-city feel that I first got from it.

I arrived before my roomate, so went to grab food but by the time I came back, she was there. We wrestled over who would get the bed by the window and I won... okay, not really, but if we had, I coulda taken her. She's a librarian, and as she confessed herself, a stereotypical librarian... though she did admit to me that if I ever want to find a man, I should go to geology conferences, 'cause the guys who attend those are all really manly-type men!

I headed out in the evening to explore, and by the time I'd done the walk along the river and the monument at the center of town, I realized I'd 'done' everything there was to do in Indianapolis! I suppose I could've gone to the zoo, but I've been to plenty of zoos, and the speedway didn't hold any real attraction for me, so the conference quickly became a working vacation. Setting my own schedule and not worrying about making food for other people, or getting up by a particular time (my presentation was in the afternoon) was fabulous! And after the hostel in San Diego, the hotel was luxurious - there were bathrobes, nintendo, snack trays, and all the little shampoo bottles and soaps you could ever desire!

The best part of all was seeing a colleague who I haven't seen for a couple of years and catching up on (and catching her up on) all the 'news' that's happened in the meantime. We had a great time at dinner and then lunch the next day and meeting her made my weekend!

Some sessions were really great, and one of them got me thinking about ways to organize one of my reading lists (a persistent monkey-on-my-back kind of problem) which really psyched me, though there were two that creeped me out: the session on the female figure in Victorian poetry that was all given by men old enough to look like they were Victorians themselves, and the session of Vonnegut where I was the only female in the room (and one panelist introduced himself to every other man in the room, but not to me). Are there no other women who like Vonnegut?

After all, I already like Dick!

Glad I'm not alone

Depressed doctoral students? Naaaaah, you must be dreaming!

This article in the Chronicle doesn't surprise me in the least... in fact, it consoles me to read that in a study of 3100 graduate students 67 percent reported feeling hopeless at times, 95 percent felt overwhelmed in graduate school, and 54 percent said they had felt so "depressed that it was difficult to function."

Hell, it's comforting to know that I'm normal!

Ouch!

Everything I have to do over the next month (plus all the things I should've done over the last two weeks but didn't 'cause I was flying all over the place) came crashing down on my head... literally... this morning. I took one look at my desk and realized that a) there's a lot of stuff on it, and b) all that stuff needs to be read, noted, filed, annotated, or otherwise dealt with in a painful manner.

Ugh!

On a cheerier note, I woke up to my children quoting Eddie Izzard 'Bunch of flowers' and 'Areyouhappywithyourwash?', which made me glad to be home.

Guess it really is all about the good together with the bad.

Technology is insidious

I just got sidetracked from what I should be doing by thinking about all the technological gadgets and inventions that I now feel like I couldn't do without, though I do remember a time before they existed.

I was reading a book where a reference was made to a novel that reminded me of a film. Now the problem was, I couldn't remember the name of the film (I have a mind like a sieve sometimes - this particular tidbit must've fallen through and got swept out with the trash).

I also knew I should be able to remember it but spent ten minutes digging around in my brain trying to find it. I could however remember one of the actors - not his name, but the fact that he was also in lots of other movies. So I went to imdb.com and looked up one of the movies I remember him being in, then linked through the cast list to his filmography, and then from there found the title of the movies I was looking for. Of course, once I saw it, I 'remembered' the title.

I would have been hard pressed to fill in that gap in my memory without the internet and readily accessible and cross-referenced information like that.

It made me remember all the other times I've said 'How did I manage without this before?' Microwave ovens (for heating baby bottles quickly while a child is wailing), VCRs (and now DVD players) for re-viewing movies (with pause features to stop and make notes), cell phones (try going without one for a while - hard to find payphones these days) just to name a few. There are plenty of other things I enjoy but can imagine doing without, but these ones definitely make my life more convenient.

But what would I do without them? Without the internet, I would've had to go to a library to look that information (and being inherently lazy, might not have done so!), without a microwave, you have to use water in a pot on the stove (and I've done it - it takes what seems like forever when you've got a hungry kid), without a VCR, I would have to rely on memory (or multiple trips to the theatre) to write film criticism, and without a cell phone, I'd have to find a payphone (and only call people who were at home or work with phones nearby), or plan ahead and hope nothing changes in the meantime.

Does this technology actually make my life better? Or does it just allow me to be lazier and less organized?

My guess is the latter. In that case, it might not actually be a good thing...

I survived!

Whew!

Two conferences, two papers, two flights, two different time zones/regions of the country... all in the space of a week.

And I survived! I actually got some really good response from this paper, and while I think there were several people in the audience who hadn't read any of the novels I was talking about, there were a few who had, and we had great synchronicity between each of the papers presented.

AND I'M DONE!

Now I can sit back, have dinner & drinks with my friend who I haven't seen in two years, and then alternate between sleeping, going down to the pool, oh, and attending some other panels I suppose...

I am SO not used to this!

I feel a bit like a kid, getting all excited about nothing, but I still think it's super cool that I am writing this in my hotel room in Indianapolis.

Okay, so if you do this all the time, you're thinking, what's the fuss? but I don't do this all the time. Hell, I only got a laptop a couple of years ago (and probably wouldn't have gotten one even then if we weren't forced by the school to buy one), and only got a wireless card a couple of months ago. But I still think it's cool I can sit in my hotel room and surf, blog, answer email... all kinds of cool-not-getting-work-done kind of stuff!

I've gotta get excited about something... Indianapolis itself isn't wowing me - it reminds me of Regina.

PCA Conference 3

My travelling caught up to me on Friday. I went to the first session, but then skipped two to go for a run and some necessary shopping. I still met up with the group from the night before for breakfast though, but declined their offer to go to the zoo. We agreed to meet at poolside later, then go to dinner, but the zoo group didn’t make it back in time, and a smaller group of us went for margaritas at happy hour at TGIF. I don’t quite remember what I actually ate there… Overall, it was an uneventful day.

The first two sessions on Saturday morning were interesting, and I spent some time in the book vendor room (had to keep reminding myself to only look – I didn’t have any extra luggage space!), then caught a noon ferry to Coronado Island. I love ferries. Actually, I love travelling on the water, period. Growing up in the prairies, then living in the foothills of the mountains, water and water travel still holds a fascination for me. And at $2, the price was right. Half of Coronado Island is taken up by the military base, with the other half divided between homes of the ultra-rich, and a tourist trap of restaurants, gift shops, and bicycle rental shops. But just because you’re in a tourist trap, doesn’t mean you need to spend money, and I enjoyed a wander around the perimeter to the ocean side.

The houses on the island are decadently beautiful, and I immensely enjoyed the experience of wandering though immaculate neighbourhoods, smelling hibiscus and lemon trees, and ignoring the fact that this unreal vision of a city street was a far cry from any place I had ever lived (or even where the vast majority of the human population live).

I did find myself wishing I hadn’t listened to the weather forecast that said it was going to rain all week and had brought shorts instead, since the weather was fine and sunny, but by the time I got back to downtown, the wind had come up and made the ferry ride over the water chilly enough to be glad of the sweater and pants I had with me.

Disorganization struck again at dinner time. We (the Stephen King people) were supposed to meet in the lobby and go for dinner together, and I found one other King person, but neither of us saw anyone else who we recognized (and I’d been to enough of the panels to know most everyone by sight at least). So there we were a half hour later, hungry, and ready to give up on everyone else. Which we did.

We wandered the Gaslamp district, trying to find someplace that looked reasonably priced, not too loud, and not too spicy… an Irish pub seemed like just the place. Well, the not too spicy was borne out, as was the reasonably priced, but the place rapidly became so loud that we couldn’t hear each other from across the table. We decided desert would have to be somewhere else, and continued wandering, coming across a place that was part bar/part restaurant. We specifically chose it because it was almost whisper quiet and it was possible to have a good conversation. Within a half hour however, the restaurant tables were cleared away, a dance floor set up, a sound system jacked in, and bouncers with red velvet ropes deployed onto the sidewalk. Within another fifteen minutes, the collective length of women’s skirts was reduced by half, the music doubled, then trebled in volume, and then they turned it up even louder. It was time to go. The blood on the sidewalk in front of the same place as I passed it the next morning said that leaving had probably been a good call.

So I came home.

PCA Conference 2

The next morning (Thursday), I was nervous, but not too much, and reassured myself that nothing disastrous would happen during my presentation, by watching three other people present in the time slot before mine. They didn’t implode from the stress, and frankly, one guy who tried to talk off the cuff ended up sounding so disorganized, I knew I wouldn’t have any problems reading my prepared paper.

And I didn’t. We had a pretty good question period afterwards, and although the only question/comment was directed at the place where my paper and another panelist’s overlapped, I think the session worked well. Best line during the discussion period? “Harold Bloom is an ass!” The Stephen King organizer was on my panel, and told me of a great grocery store with a deli nearby, so a bunch of us headed over there. Even though there was an interesting talk on Tolkein scheduled for the next time slot, I stayed and talked, getting to know a couple of the other students. They even continued to talk to me after I interjected into the conversation at one point to say “I like Dick”, meaning of course, Philip K., but when you say it in the middle of a crowded hotel lobby, I think most people’s first thoughts do not turn to a literary reference!

One of the other grad students who I was talking to was going to the book launch of a volume that he had contributed a chapter towards, and invited me to come along, so I went. We gathered more and more people as the day progressed, and suddenly there were eight of us – six Canadians and two Americans – not sure how it worked out that way.... We were all grad students, so none of us were actually staying at the Marriott, but we still asked the doorman if he could get us a cab. Turns out, he got the hotel van, and we drove across town for the cost of a tip to the driver!

The book launch was interesting, though by the end of it, I was very hungry, so the food at the Thai food restaurant we found tasted fabulous! I’m sure it would’ve been good food either way, but being bitch-hungry helped a lot in our estimation of its quality. We all agreed to walk off some of the dinner and found a Karaoke bar, named “The Caliph” of all places, but shortly after getting there, I realized I didn’t have the night code for the front door of the hostel, and if I didn’t leave shortly, I’d find myself turning into a pumpkin, so a quick cab ride was necessary to get me to the doors on time. Happily, I didn’t turn into a pumpkin, and even slept well that night.