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.

PCA conference

I landed in San Diego at about 7 pm local time (though to me it felt much later) and at first, all I could think about was getting my luggage and finding a bed. But as a walked through the terminal to the baggage claim area, my path took me past a wall of windows several stories high. Since it was dark, it took me a while to even notice that the wall was glass, but when someone walked through an automatic door next to me, the warm sweet-smelling air (yes, sweet, even at an airport!) caught my attention and with a shock, I realized I was looking out at a row of palm trees. Palm trees!

The only time I've seen palm trees (at least this variety - they had them in Sao Paulo, but they were a different species of tree and looked very different) is on vacation - I've never lived somewhere where palm trees grow, and at that moment, all the worry about whether my paper was going to be well received, whether I'd learn anything, whether I'd hear some interesting papers, or whether I'd be bored with the whole conference, just fell away and I felt a surge of excitement, as if I was on vacation. I remembered where this conference was going to be held, and looked forward to seeing the city itself in addition to the scholars I'd be spending the next three days with.

After calling home and reassuring my daughter that I was still in California even if there was a message on the phone from the airline saying that my (original) flight had been cancelled because in this country, there's always another flight, I grabbed my bag and looked forward to getting my first glimpse of the city. The bus ride into downtown was over too fast (and I missed some of it trying to show the girl from Australia on my map where she wanted to get off the bus), but from what I did see, the city seemed to sparkle.

Now, I wasn't that enraptured by the city that I forgot that cities look much nicer in the dark, with their lights shining and the garbage obscured by low lighting, but even by the light of day the next morning, the place shone. In fact, the longer I wandered around, the more I wondered why the locals even bothered putting shoes on in the morning, the streets were so neatly swept at all times. (When I left Sunday morning at 5:30, crews were already out sweeping up cigarette butts and other debris – 5:30 in the morning!)

I found the hostel without a problem, and got my room, which was nice and spacious. Worth the money, I thought. Now came the problem that I had realized even before I left Boston – I had forgotten the web print out of the conference, which included the address of the hotel the conference was actually being held at (with room rates of $150/night, it was too rich for my blood, hence the hostel). The best my mind could come up with was the Omni.

I’d seen the Omni from the bus ride, so I headed over there, but the lobby was strangely empty and the conference area had no signage. I realized I was thinking about the wrong weekend – I was going to be at the Omni in Indianapolis, not San Diego. Rooting around in my memory, I came up with the Marriott, and I’d seen one on the walk to the Omni. So I headed over there. But it’s lobby was eerily empty as well.

I was puzzled, and feeling just a bit embarrassed. But I tried to ignore my rising embarrassment and asked the desk clerk if the PCA group was meeting in this hotel. She checked. No PCA. I turned to leave, thinking it was awfully late, but I could wake someone up at home and ask them to look it up. She stopped me, “Wait, it could be at the Marriott Marina”. Oh! Two hotels! Well. Okay. Sure enough, that’s where they’re meeting, and it’s only five blocks away.

The sign that said “PCA” in the lobby of the Marriott Marina was like a beacon from on high, illuminating the prize at the end of a long quest at that point. My feet started to ache as I clutched my bag of goodies on the way back to food and bed.

Despite a mind-befuddling tiredness, I found it difficult to sleep since the restaurant across the alley seemed to need to get rid of every bottle in the kitchen, one at a time, over five minute intervals until about 3 am, but I did sleep. That is, until the bottle pickers came to gather them before the dump trucks at 5 am.

Oh well, I figure sleep’s overrated anyway.

Photos

Yesterday, I was seeing this...



Today, I see this outside my window...


*sigh*

Well, I'm back

WOW!

What a weekend! It turned out that there was not rain the entire time (in fact, very little of it) and I didn't need that umbrella. What I needed was sunscreen - which I didn't bring - so as I type this, my nose is shining a beautiful Rudolph-esque red (which I really hope fades by tomorrow when I have to go out in public again!)

But even aside from the sunny weather, the conference itself was fabulous! It was great to be with so many people who are doing that "weird" pop culture stuff like I do. And the level of discourse in some of those papers was amazing! There were some really cogent and intelligent arguments about the most mundane phenomena - the stuff that we enjoy and take in almost without thinking much of the time. It was stimulating to hear those papers and engage in the discussions that follow!

I feel energized and excited about not only the projects that people were presenting on, but on my own work. One paper in particular was doing much the same kind of thing (very different texts) as I am in the paper this week (man, I'm gonna be tired by the time that one's over!) and I had a long discussion with its author and he gave me a copy of his paper about it, which gave me some great ideas for revising my paper and fixing some of the places where I was having a problem making things relate to each other easily.

My body is exhausted (the hostel was right in the middle of the club district of downtown San Diego - noise, not activity), but my mind in energized, and I've got a boost of energy and feel inspired to keep going - just what I needed about now.

(I need to figure out a way to get to next year's conference!)

Well, I'm off

I was hoping to catch some rays between sessions in San Diego, but the forecast is for rain all week, so I'm packing my umbrella instead. Don't know what electronic connections will be like (it is pop culture, so you'd think there'd be access, then again, I'm staying at the hostel & you usually have to pay at hostels), so I may not post for a while.

Thanks to everyone who wished me luck on my trip and the paper. You guys rock!

Simple, really

Sometimes a cappuccino with chocolate sauce drizzled on top is the very best thing in the world.

More useless stuff

Seems I'm on a bit of a quiz kick lately... not conscious, but I just keep running across these strange quizzes. And then I take them. And the results really aren't quite what I expect.

Your Brain is 53.33% Female, 46.67% Male

Your brain is a healthy mix of male and female You are both sensitive and savvy Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve

What Gender Is Your Brain?

Frankly this one's pretty much bullshit, since you can tell which questions will get you more "male" characteristics and which ones more "female" characteristics because the questions all point to socialized behaviours that are coded are male or female in our culture. So when I answered, I tried to be honest about how I've been socialized... and voilá! I'm not a social misfit... right down the middle... good ole mediocre michele... no surprises there!

*sigh* I really have to find more interesting ways to waste time - maybe it's time to buy a Nintendo

Slightly less lame

Last post I wrote in this space was extremely lame and thus has gotten the axe. Question is whether this one can move on up the lame-scale!

I am getting a bit excited/nervous about going to San Diego next week. I fly out Wednesday afternoon and come back Sunday morning (non-stop; 7 hours - I haven't been on a flight that long since we flew back from South America. Funny that - we ended up in Southern California that time too)

I'm fairly happy with the paper, and I'll get some feedback from a fellow fan/scholar next week so at least I'll have someone else's perspective on what the paper reads like. I'm of course a bit nervous about presenting, particularly since the other people on my panel are more seasoned than I am at this kind of thing.

I've never been to San Diego, and when I was last in L.A., I was eleven years old, so my perspective of southern California is from a child's perspective. It will be interesting to visit a new place, and should only cost me a couple hundred dollars out of my own pocket - overall, a good value I figure. Since we only made it as far south as San Fransisco when we did our road trip year before we left, this trip will fill in another piece of California for me.

Not to mention the fact that the Pop Culture conference has a lot of really fabulous panels (and some pretty interesting people to go with them). I'm looking forward to hearing some really neat papers and meeting some neat people.

The week after PCA, I head off to Indianapolis (probably not quite so charmingly picaresque) for another conference, so today I put the finishing touches on that paper. I still have to time it, but it's in the right range.

I'm sure I'll be happy to stay home in April!

Damn! I'm just confirming a stereotype!

So, I met some new people last night... okay, well, I'd met them before, but this time I actually drank with them... and I figure you don't really know people until you've drank/slept/lived with them.

Anyway, one of them said "You're Canadian, right? I knew you were Canadian because you're so nice" *minor cringe* - "nice" is an awfully not-nice word sometimes, isn't it?

So I figured when this evil test showed up in my inbox today, I could take it and I'd probably score pretty high... at least I thought so. Apparently I actually am a nice person. Damn!

I am 32% evil.

I could go either way. I have sinned quite a bit but I still have a bit of room for error. My life is a tug of war between good and evil.

Are you evil? find out at Hilowitz.com

Oops!

I have several computer engineering students in my class writing reports about computer security (viruses, spyware etc.) and it just occurred to me that even though Dwayne and I both have multiple programs, the girls have minimal coverage on their computer. And they'll be more likely to fall for spyware pop-ups etc.
Guess I know what I should do tonight!

Indecision bites

I've reached one of those stages again where I have so much to do, I don't know what to do first. It's a case of frozen indecision, the worst kind of fate for an overworked student because it seems so utterly ridiculous ... frozen indecision to a grad student is like writer's block to a writer... awfully easy to fall in to, hard to pinpoint why it happens, and hard to get back out of.

Typical scenario:
I've just finished reading this interesting article by Todorov...should I read the next article by Coles in the book, or read Todorov's book? Both are on my list. Which one should I do first?
Stand up, stretch, walk around the living room once, then twice.
Or maybe I should read some in one of the other areas. I haven't read a novel in a long time. Maybe I should start London Fields. Or maybe I should read the Todorov. Or maybe I should read the Coles.
Walk into the bedroom/study and see a sheaf of papers on my desk.
Maybe I should read this stack of papers instead of the Coles or the Todorov book. It would help me decide how to focus this other reading list.
Go downstairs again, fill up coffee cup, muttering to myself as I walk back up the stairs.
No, I'm not going to let myself get distracted, I'm going to read the next article in this book, the Coles, and then maybe I'll read the Todorov.
Walk into the bedroom/study, glance at another pile of books (different place from the sheaf of papers). See a book with a paper band around the front cover.
Oh! I have an interlibrary loan! I wonder when it's due? I hope it's not overdue! Or please don't let it be due tommorrow!
Walk over to the book, look at the date on the cover.
Whew! It's due in four days. Well, I guess that decides it for me. I'd better read this book before I have to return it!
Sit down and open book to table of contents.
Oh yeah, right... gotta mark papers for tomorrow too.
The disaster of frozen indecision is averted... at least for the next four days.