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.