Rain

Poetry slumbers within the busy soul.

Or in other words:

In his discussion about how stories are passed on, oral stories that are rapidly disappearing from our culture in favor instead of the printed word, the novel, information, Walter Benjamin describes how the listener makes the story her own:
This process of assimilation, which takes place in depth, requires a state of relaxation which is becoming rarer and rarer. If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away. This nesting places - the activities that are intimately associated with boredom - are already extinct in the cities and are declining in the country as well.

Walter Benjamin, "The Storyteller" Illuminations (1955)

Drowning

I was so delighted when I found that I had a two day a week teaching schedule this term. I imagined how much work toward my exams I would get done the other three days of the week - three days! luxurious time! - but as with all dreams, reality is much different.

Last week I went into Boston five days of the week - that's 5 times the 3 hour round trip - 15 hours of walking to the bus, waiting for the bus, riding the bus, walking from the bus.... well, you get the idea. But I consoled myself that I would have three whole days of study to look forward to this week.

Ha!

Things that are stealing away my study time:
groceries
auto inspection (due by Thursday)
soccer game
dentist appointment (2 - one for me and one for a child)
wine transferring (it will be vinegar if I don't deal with it soon)
haircut (DESPERATELY overdue!)
winterizing supplies
mandatory (extremely annoying) and long teaching meeting
marking papers
weeding the garden before the rain forecast for the rest of the week
laundry
covering someone else's class

That doesn't even include the things that I would enjoy having cut into my study time like going to the gym, watching movies, watching my kids' sports, writing, answering email from friends who must think I'm dead, spending time with my great husband....

All I can do is hope that next week I have my three days free.

Now here's a question...

I'm on the bus coming home when I hear sirens. My book is pretty boring anyway, so I look up to see a fire truck coming toward us on the street.

Then I realize an ambulance is coming up behind us.

My question: Who gets the right of way?

Answer: I still don't know, but in this case, the fire truck went first.
Is that just 'cause he's bigger, or because he had his lights and siren going and the ambulance only had lights on?

How do they decide?

Something to ponder next time you're stuck in line at the DMV.

Spelling woes

Forwarded to me via email:

John Kerry said that the W. in George W. Bush stands for "Wrong" -- "wrong choices, wrong judgment, wrong priorities, wrong direction for our country." The Bush campaign responded saying that it was just the opposite, that the W. actually stands for "Write".

Ouch!

You can test whether you're a better speller than Dubya at the Guardian's spelling quiz

I'm afraid I have to admit I didn't get them all right... I guess I, like many others, have gotten way too dependent on spellcheck.

What the hell?

I dreamt about doing laundry last night... It wasn't even my laundry, or anything that I would recognize as something that I own, and for some reason I spilled water all over the floor when I opened the machine.

What the hell was that about?

Mood: Good

I realize "good" is a pretty plain word, but as I tried to insert other words, they all fell short of what I was feeling. I'm just feeling good.

Spent most of yesterday surrounded by the smell of ripe grapes (not the sterile, tasteless and odorless kind you get in the supermarket) that I first picked, then destemmed, and finally crushed. It's a heady scent.

Guess why?

Wine, of course!

First time I'm trying to make grape wine from scratch, so wish me luck...

And the night before, I felt at least partially vindicated for losing the Stanley cup with Canada winning the Worlds! Really fun game to watch too - mostly fair calls, no dirty fights (well, no fights at all), and some really good skill-work and a couple of dynamic checks. A great game!

Today, I get down to work. I'm hoping to put a big dent in my schedule this week and maybe recoup some of the speed I lost this summer and the early part of the month.

Weird part is, I'm actually looking forward to it!

Status: Busy

Wow! Leave town for a week and all hell breaks loose!

Found out when I got back that I had to entirely rewrite the syllabus (you've already heard this one) I'd prepared on the plane to accomodate department requirements that were unknown to me at the time (the email came in on Monday and because I was away, I didn't see it till Wednesday)

Rewrote the syllabus (which took much longer than I expected and involved the wee hours of one morning)

Attended two meet 'n greet type functions (one at BU and the other for NEU) in two days. Lots of smiling and making nice.

Started panicking about book reveiw due on Monday (yes, tomorrow). I think I bit off more than I can chew with this book review, and although I finished reading the book weeks ago, I'm having difficulty writing anything that doesn't sound entirely too elementary to make a good impression.... hell, at this point I'll go for not looking like a complete fool.

I asked to review the book because I'd read the previous volume put out by these editors and thought this one would be interesting - which it is. Problem is, I feel under-qualified to comment on the position of the text within the scholarship that it represents. So I'm not writing as confidently as I otherwise would - which annoys me.

Also tallied up the losses from working dumb ass summer jobs. I'm now three full weeks behind on the reading list I set up at the beginning of the summer... mind you, losing a week to unexpected travel and the prep for it accounts for part of it, though I'm still a good two weeks behind. F***.

If I don't post for a while, it's likely that I'm not dead, just attending to all this stuff and the people in my life who I see face to face instead of virtual.

More drivin'

Okay, so it's not my imagination - ranked in order of difficulty to naviagate as a driver:

Bert Sperling's Top 10 Most Difficult Cities to Navigate
1. Boston, MA
2. Washington, DC
3. San Francisco, CA
4. Baltimore, MD
5. New York, NY-Northeastern NJ
6. Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood-Pompano Beach, FL
7. Los Angeles, CA
8. Seattle-Everett, WA
9. Providence, Pawtucket RI-MA
10. Norfolk-Newport News-Virginia Beach, VA

At least I don't feel so bad about how many times I've gotten lost in this city.

Info from Sperling's Best Places.

Drivin' me ______

You fill in the blank....

It was only five days, but driving in Calgary for five days was long enough for me to really notice the difference when I headed out to the grocery store - had to brake for a guy running a red.

In only five days I'd gotten used to (again) people actually following traffic laws.

Back home

The weekend was full of activity, people, and emotions.

The girls came through with (what looks like) flying colors being on their own. Yeah!

111 emails.

One of which requires me to entirely rewrite the syllabus I put together on the plane and with a timeframe for the first assignment that is so tight, I have no idea how to implement it.

*sigh*

Weird intersections

Games.

They seem to be everywhere: the latest fiction book I'm reading The Player of Games, an sf novel about a perpetual game player; I watched David Cronenberg's eXistenZ the other night; and the library just emailed me to tell me a book I asked them to hold about four months ago is now available: Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals.

Not that I know much about game theory, or am even terribly good at playing the things, but its weird how some things come in threes.

From eXistenZ:
Ted Pikul (disgruntled game player): I don't like it here. I don't know what's going on. We're both stumbling together in this unformed world whose rules and objectives are largely unknown seemingly indecipherable or even possibly non-existent. Always on the verge of being killed by forces that we don't understand.
Allegra Geller (game designer): Sound like my game alright.
Pikul: Sounds like a game that's not gonna be easy to market.
Geller: But it's a game everybody's already playing.

Sad news

We learnt yesterday that Dwayne's mother died. We were expecting it (see last month's archives), but it doesn't make it any easier, particularly since now he has no parents.

I'm gonna share mine with him.

So... we wanted to get out of the city for the Labor Day Weekend - looks like we're gonna get really far out now. If anyone's gonna be in Calgary this weekend, maybe I'll see you there.

Good advice

I must remember this tip for saving my ass. With my paranoia about this place, it may just come in handy.

Thanks Jen!

I'm early but I'm celebrating!

I know I have one more excruciatingly looooong day tomorrow of being nice to strangers, but I feel free! I am no longer selling my body for dollars. (believe, it has really only ever been my body that's engaged in these jobs) I felt so good about it, I started studying this afternoon.

[How's that for a bizarre reward....!]

Countdown!

Only one more week of wage-slaveness! Whoopee! It will be very nice to actually have to hunker down with books again and use my brain. I'm afraid it's starting to shrivel like a grape left in the sun too long!

16 more hours unpacking boxes/running a scantron & 14 1/2 more hours answering telephones and being nice to customers (that last one's the hardest part - I can do it, but it takes an awful lot out of me to sustain niceness for more than a few hours at a time).

Then I can get back to being a poor student instead of just a poor wage-slave.

Water fountains and Pay phones

Two things that seem to be harder to find the older I get. Maybe that's because people mostly drink bottled water and use cell phones. But for somebody who rarely does either, the dearth of pay phones and water fountains is an irritation.

The Eastern Time Zone is big!

How big is it?

The sun went down in Buffalo almost a half hour later than it did here even though we're in the same time zone. Wish we had the later sunlight here - maybe we should join Newfoundland and get the extra half hour back.

Well worth it!

Rush was definitely well worth the full day of driving to get to it and back.

While there were plenty of songs I wish they would have played but didn't, I'm not complaining since if they were to play every Rush song that I like or think is essential to their oeuvre, they would've been on stage for six hours. And there wasn't anything they played that I thought was a waste of their time.

Their stage show was very cool too - low key, not huge props etc., but a great pyrotechinics and laser light show combined with clever video. A good rocker stage show.

Their latest album is a cover album, and except for one song that I'm just not sure of yet, I like Rush's version of the song better than the original in every case.

But maybe that's 'cause I'm a Rush fan.

Driving through upstate New York was nice too - lots less traffic on the Interstate, and fewer trees - you could actually see something other than trees as you travelled. I think that's the thing that bugs me most about travelling in MA - you only ever seem to see trees - exit - trees - exit - trees - exit - trees... well, you get the idea.

Maybe its just 'cause upstate NY looks a lot more like home.

Being with Dwayne all day was cool too - when we're at home, there's always something that needs to get done, kids that need (or think they need) attention, stuff to get done, but in a car for fourteen hours, all that goes away. It was a very nice escape.

And I discovered that I'm not too old to stay up all night - we drove back right away and got in at 6:30 this morning. I was hoping to catch the sunrise, but it's cloudy and overcast. Good day to catch up on reading before working twice as long at work tomorrow to make up for taking today off.

Survival and Reward

So, survived tax holiday day - mostly because everyone made such a big deal about it that they planned ahead... and put extra staff on.

My reward will be seeing Rush in concert tomorrow in Buffalo, NY. We've been wanting to see them for two years. Last time they toured, they were in Boston when we were still in Calgary, and in Calgary once we got to Boston (yeah, the timing sucked).

Yes, it's a seven hour drive, but to see Rush it will be worth it.

A good reason NOT to get up in the morning

Tomorrow is a sales tax holiday in Massachusetts - no one will have to pay the 5% sales tax tomorrow.

I work Saturdays in a tile showroom - our customers typically spend thousands of dollars with each order... I'm guessing lots of our customers would like to save money on such large purchases... The rest of the staff is guessing the same.

I'm not looking forward to work tomorrow. It's likely to be busy, which means lots of grouchy people - and I'm at the frontlines.

The good news is, by the end of tomorrow, I will be halfway through my summer-work-arrangements-from-hell. The end is in sight.