My laptop has been making strange noises...distinctly clicking noises that an electronic device should not make - a clock maybe, but a computer no. And now it does not want to work.

I was really hoping I could avoid expensive repair bills this year, since we spent thousands on the car last year.

I'm bummed out about it.

There's nothing else to say.

So I'm flipping through the Boston Globe and a headline jumps out at me: Survivor exposes Saskatchewan police abuse of Indians.

Great, the only Canadian news I get in a major U.S. paper is about bigotry in Saskatchewan. Part of me suspects that the reason they ran the article was only because Saskatchewan is such a weird word - believe me, no one around here has ever heard of it!

My friend Allie is blogging about how she's happy to be Canadian because there's hockey. And I'm from Saskatchewan - what braggin rights do I have here if this is the only thing they know about those of us born in the heart of the Canadian prairies?

Depressing.

Since November is half over, that means that schoolwork is starting to pile up. It's not reached that urgent-need-to-stay-up-all-night stage yet, but the pile of things that I need to read before beginning to write my papers is beginning to grow. And I think I'm becoming more of a perfectionist, because I keep thinking about all the additional things I should do and prepare before beginning to write.

In part, my problem is that I've got a couple of additional things going on that are taking time away from the usual. I'm trying to prepare a proposal for a directed study next term. Not only am I trying to put together a reading list, but I also need to get it approved. Since it's about science fiction AND film, I have my work cut out for me, because the chair of the Grad Studies committee has a relatively negative attitude toward both, especially film. So, the proposal has to look good - but to look good, I have to spend lots of time on it - which means that I'm falling behind in other things.

I'm also writing a language test this Friday in partial fulfillment of the language requirment for my degree. Wish me luck! I'm gonna need it! The more I study for it, the more I realize I really don't know!

*Sigh* So much work... but the good news is, I only have 5 more of those godawful 8 am classes to teach - I definitely am not a morning person and the early morning commute is making me extremely grouchy... not to mention trying to speak coherently in front of a class for 100 minutes at that hour of the morning.

Had to share this giggle. I wish I had some extra Canadian Tire money kicking around, but I thought it was useless and threw it all away when I left! Too bad, I woulda kept it had I known I could get a beer for it!

Went to a hockey game last night. I had mixed loyalties going in - As a Calgarian, I should cheer for whoever is playing against the Oilers, which would mean I'd cheer for the Bruins. However, I was with a group of 12 Edmontonians (so I was slightly outnumbered) and I felt like a patriotic solidarity might be in better order. So, yes, I cheered for the Oilers. (Though on a patriotic note, only one of the Bruins starting lineup was actually from the US - the rest were all born & bred in Canada, though Eastern Canada, so it was more a matchup of Eastern vs. Western Canada played on US soil!)

And they lost.

They deserved to lose 'cause they played like they'd forgotten how to skate or pass, and in the first period only took one shot for every three that the Bruins did, but they came close.

It is a very odd feeling cheering for the away team. There were a few nasty looks from one group nearby when we cheered the second Oiler goal. I actually was glad we were a good sized group. At least they lost, so we weren't a threat.

And speaking of cheering, I know I haven't been to an NHL game for a long time, but since when did it become de rigeur to boo the opposing teams goal? Booing a bad call, a fight, a penalty that doesn't get called, sure, but a goal? After all, if they other team doesn't score, it's a cakewalk, isn't it? and that's no fun to watch. Where's the excitement if your team doesn't have to work hard to win? Seems very unsportsmanlike to me.

In the last two days I have received e-mails from friends who I haven't seen or heard from in over a year. Wow! One was from a friend who has been overseas for the last year, and for whom I did not have a current e-mail address. The other was from some friends who recently began their own company, and have been (understandably) very busy getting it off the ground.

But what a delight! I've been feeling like I'm stuck off at the end of the world and missing everyone from home so very much, and here I hear from old friends who I thought I'd lost touch with.

I am, as I said, delighted!

And on Friday, I learned that good friends are going to have a baby! Yeah! They are gonna be super parents, and I'm excited and happy for them. Their lives are going to change so much, but it's all good...I'm gonna enjoy hearing all about it!

These joys have lifted my homesick spirits.

Comment overheard on the bus from two pretty women with prim smiles, perfect hair and pointy shoes: "He needs to start buying groceries." End of conversation.

Week 9 of the semester is almost over. Which means we're about two thirds of the way through the term. I'm trying not to panic.

So far, most of my teaching work is done. I have two more drafts to comment on, one proposal, two papers to mark, and a final portfolio to review. Sounds like a lot, and it will take a lot of time, but I've done at least that much work already. And it looks like two of my students will likely drop the class before the end of the term because they've missed so many classes and so much of the work, it really would be in their best interests to withdraw.

But my own work is hanging over my head, and that'll just get heavier and heavier as the term goes on. I still have a translation project for medieval lit to start, and I haven't even read all the primary material for both the papers I want to write, let alone the secondary stuff. It wouldn't be too bad a schedule if I hadn't signed up to take the language exam this fall, which means I need to review my Spanish translation skills, which are, much to my dismay, pretty rusty. I spent most of the beginning of the term translating a German text for the professor who I'm helping as a research assistant, and the switch between languages is throwing me off.

The good news is that things seem to be going pretty good for the kids in school. Steph is getting much better marks in math than she was before, and the other two are holding their own, even with all their extracurricular interests. I just signed Angela up for soccer in the spring, so she'll be busy with that in addition to her piano lessons. Speaking of which, they are going better than I thought they would. I've been trying to teach her since I can't really afford to pay anyone, even at the discounted rate that I'm sure I could get from my colleague's wife. I'm sure it would be better for Ange if I could, but for a year or so, I don't think it will hurt her to have an amateur give it a try. So far, so good, but I'm finding myself having to stretch back in memory to try to explain things I haven't thought about myself in twenty years!

So the semester roller coaster is starting to pick up speed (I'm getting tired of this ride!), and I just need to hang on tight, stay focused, and NOT GET SICK! If I get sick, that'll be the end of the workable plan and I'll have to move into panic mode.

Went to school today for the sole purpose of fulfilling my role as PhD rep only to find the meeting cancelled.

Thanks for telling me.

Apparently in an effort to conserve paper, they e-mailed everybody but me.

Three hour round trip in the rain and cold for nothing.

*Big fat raspberry*

Have you ever tried googling yourself? [interesting how this noun has taken on verb-like qualities]

I get more hits under my old name than my new one. I guess that's to be expected, but I think the ones under my new name are overall more impressive. It's funny who else pops up. When I googled my old name, I kept running into a Lietenant commander who has apparently done lots of stuff (there was a soccer player too, but she apparently only played soccer). Under my current name, I kept running across articles about a woman in Ohio who supposedly videotaped a UFO - the weird part is that she also has a daughter named Stephanie! It also comes up on a German site...kinda tickles my fancy.

I suppose I was lucky to find so many legit references because of the unique spelling of my first name (and of my former last name). If you've never tried it, you should!

Had a friend send me a link to the Observer's top 100 books of all time.

The list anticipates a list being compiled by the BBC which will be released later this year, and is mostly comprised of the reading habits/desires of the staff at the Observer. What surprised me was the low number of these I've actually read (23). Though if you include books that I've read by some of the authors, just not the books listed, my number goes up a bit. So, if you're wondering what kind of stuff I like to/have been forced to read, here's the list replicated along with my relationship to each of the books. I may have to change my response to some of these books though if friends recommend the ones I haven't read.

So, what I've actually read, want to read, would never read...

1. Don Quixote Miguel De Cervantes - no attraction there
2. Pilgrim's Progress John Bunyan - read in university
3. Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe - ditto
4. Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift - ditto
(though I think it might count for extra credit to read the entire thing and not the abbridged version for these two)
5. Tom Jones Henry Fielding - nope
6. Clarissa Samuel Richardson - probably should - it's considered the first novel in English
7. Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne - nope
8. Dangerous Liaisons Pierre Choderlos De Laclos - not even sure what this one's about... eek!
9. Emma Jane Austen - nope, but I think Pride and Prejudice should count
10. Frankenstein Mary Shelley - at least 3 times!
11. Nightmare Abbey Thomas Love Peacock - nope, but sounds interesting
12. The Black Sheep Honore De Balzac - no interest
13. The Charterhouse of Parma Stendhal - no interest
14. The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas - abbridged version, does that count?
15. Sybil Benjamin Disraeli - nope
16. David Copperfield Charles Dickens - it's on a course list for next term....
17. Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte - actually have never read!
18. Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte - yes, avoided reading it till I was forced to for a course last year and then was surprised to find I liked it!
19. Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray - nope
20. The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne - yep, American Lit
21. Moby-Dick Herman Melville - ditto - ugh! it was WAY too long!
22. Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert - nope, but sitting on a shelf waiting to be read
23. The Woman in White Wilkie Collins - that reading list for next term again
24. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland Lewis Carroll - yep, liked it
25. Little Women Louisa M. Alcott - nope
26. The Way We Live Now Anthony Trollope - nope
27. Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy - nope, but sounds a bit interesting
28. Daniel Deronda George Eliot - nope, but I read the 800 page Middlemarch - does that count?
29. The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky - nope
30. The Portrait of a Lady Henry James - American Lit again
31. Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain - as a kid
32. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson - yes!
33. Three Men in a Boat Jerome K. Jerome - nope
34. The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde - yes, loved it
35. The Diary of a Nobody George Grossmith -nope
36. Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy - yep, it was okay I guess
37. The Riddle of the Sands Erskine Childers - nope
38. The Call of the Wild Jack London - no, can you believe it?
39. Nostromo Joseph Conrad - nope, but I've read The Secret Agent and Heart of Darkness - might count?
40. The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame - no, bad eh?
41. In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust - nope
42. The Rainbow D. H. Lawrence - nope, but like Lawrence...(I've heard it's juicy, hmmm....)
43. The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford - nope
44. The Thirty-Nine Steps John Buchan - nope, not sure if I've ever even heard of this one
45. Ulysses James Joyce - on the shelf...the more I hear about it, the more I want to read it
46. Mrs Dalloway Virginia Woolf - nope, no desire to read it either
47. A Passage to India E. M. Forster -nope
48. The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald - yes, liked it
49. The Trial Franz Kafka - of course! love Kafka
50. Men Without Women Ernest Hemingway - nope, and probably never will, tried For Whom the Bell Tolls and hated it
51. Journey to the End of the Night Louis-Ferdinand Celine - nope
52. As I Lay Dying William Faulkner - no, probably should though....
53. Brave New World Aldous Huxley - yes! loved it
54. Scoop Evelyn Waugh - nope
55. USA John Dos Passos - ? never heard of it or the author
56. The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler - nope, not a bit detective/mystery fan
57. The Pursuit Of Love Nancy Mitford - nope
58. The Plague Albert Camus - yep, pretty good - read it in a class on Representations of Epidemic in Literature - cool class
59. Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell - yes! multiple times (also love animal farm)
60. Malone Dies Samuel Beckett - nope
61. Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger - yep, only vague memories of it 'cause it was back in high school - couldn't have impressed me much
62. Wise Blood Flannery O'Connor - nope
63. Charlotte's Web E. B. White - yes, love it
64. The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien - this doesn't even warrant a comment - I had to buy a new copy of the books last year 'cause my old one literally fell apart!
65. Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis - nope, but I like what his son writes...
66. Lord of the Flies William Golding - yep, read it in high school and it spurred a whole season of interest in apocalyptic fiction
67. The Quiet American Graham Greene - nope
68 On the Road Jack Kerouac - no, but this is on a must read sometime list
69. Lolita Vladimir Nabokov - ditto
70. The Tin Drum Gunter Grass - nope, haven't even heard of this one either
71. Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe - nope, but love the poem (and poet) that the title is borrowed from - Í'd like to read this one
72. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark -nope
73. To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee - yep, read it to help a student I was tutoring... wasn't overly impressed though
74. Catch-22 Joseph Heller - nope
75. Herzog Saul Bellow - nope
76. One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez - love Marquez, just haven't read this one - it's high on that must read list!
77. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont Elizabeth Taylor - nope
78. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy John Le Carre - nope
79. Song of Solomon Toni Morrison - hmm...like Morrison, but there are other novels of hers I'd put higher on the list
80. The Bottle Factory Outing Beryl Bainbridge - nope
81. The Executioner's Song Norman Mailer - nope, no interest at all
82. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller Italo Calvino -nope, might be interesting though
83. A Bend in the River V. S. Naipaul - nope
84. Waiting for the Barbarians J.M. Coetzee - nope
85. Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson - nope, haven't heard of this one either
86. Lanark Alasdair Gray - nope, no interest
87. The New York Trilogy Paul Auster - nope
88. The BFG Roald Dahl - love Roald Dahl! Have probably read every one of his books except this one!
89. The Periodic Table Primo Levi - nope, never heard of it before, but sounds interesting though
90. Money Martin Amis - haven't read this one, but i like the author!
91. An Artist of the Floating World Kazuo Ishiguro - nope
92. Oscar And Lucinda Peter Carey -nope, no interest
93. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting Milan Kundera - nope
94. Haroun and the Sea af Stories Salman Rushdie - loved Rushdie's Satanic Verses, probably would put this on a reading list...
95. La Confidential James Ellroy - nope
96. Wise Children Angela Carter - love Angela Carter, haven't read this one though - I've read her revisions of fairy tales (kinda like James Garner's) and liked them alot!
97. Atonement Ian McEwan - nope
98. Northern Lights Philip Pullman - nope, no interest
99. American Pastoral Philip Roth - nope, no interest
100. Austerlitz W. G. Sebald - ? never heard of him or the book

Guess I've got reading to do (whenever I might possibly have the time!

Still not sure what it was I forgot on Saturday. Hope it wasn't important.

Have had an odd weekend. Not that anything odd happened, just that the things that happened seemed to happen in an odd, stretched-out sort of way. I know I worked all weekend, but if you ask me what I did, I honestly don't know if I can account for the whole thing. I know I studied Spanish, read medieval romance and modern poetry, but that amount of work doesn't seem to add up to the amount of weekend I spent working.

It was almost as if I was studying in slow motion - everything taking much longer than it should. Sorta like when you have a nightmare where you're trying to run away from something/someone chasing you, and the harder you try to run, the slower you seem to be going....and you just know that the thing that's chasing you is going to catch you.

And then you wake up.

I don't think I've woken up yet.

Came upstairs to where the computer is to do something but forgot by the time I sat down in front of it. I hate that!

Pretty sure it had something to do with the computer...look something up? write something down? e-mail somebody?

So I'm blogging, though I don't think that was it either...or if it was, I've forgotten what I will blog about!

A few recent posts probably could use some follow-up, so here goes:

I am much more mobile now - although I have not yet gone for a run - and probably won't for another week or so - I feel almost fully healed. Aside from some stiffness in the morning that usually goes away after stretching (and only comes back after marathon reading sessions in which I don't get up for hours) I feel good. I was ready to play basketball with friends yesterday, but we couldn't gather enough people, which I suppose is good since I'm sure I'll be in much better shape next week - they'd better look out!

My computer has been on and running for almost four hours now - and that's much longer than it has been working all week. I have no idea what it was that was shutting it down...and since I have no idea what it was that caused it, or which of the myriad things I did to it in an attempt to fix it actually worked, it will remain to be seen if I have actually fixed it, or this is just a temporary respite.

I also spent four hours poking around under the hood of the car trying to figure out how water was getting into the interior. A wet interior is not life threatening to a car, true, but it is annoying, makes the car smell like wet...dog? kid? upholstery? whatever it smells like, it's not great. And I'm worried that the water will not just flow through the dash harmlessly but will trigger the kind of $2000 meltdown we had last winter. And since winter around here means rain, and lots of it, something needs to be done. I think I found the problem, though I guess I won't know till after the next big rainstorm. If that fixed it, I'll be glad; if not, I'll be annoyed at the waste of time.

I've also had to fix a kitchen cabinet, spray for ants that are invading (though I'm not sure from where), and fix the cheese board (so I could use it for dinner guests last night) this week.

[I really hate being poor and having stuff that is old or doesn't work!]

And of course the Sox blew it. It was really rather amazing - at the bottom of the seventh in the seventh game, they're up three runs and then in the eighth, the Yankees even up the score, they go into overtime and lose the five hour long game! After the disastrous eighth, I went to bed - it was already almost midnight and I had to teach at 8 the next morning - and told Dwayne to only wake me if they won. I woke up at 3 am after a vivid, and particularly realistic dream about being reamed out by my supervisor, but I did not wake up for a Sox win. [insert expletive] I wanted to see them play the Cubs (though they lost too), but even the Marlins would've been cool.

And academically, I still have too much work to do.

Interesting...though I don't think I should quit my day job...

MAJOR STARS

10 names from the US entertainment industry who majored in English literature:

1 Alan Alda
2 Dave Barry
3 Chevy Chase
4 Jodi Foster
5 Chris Isaak
6 Paul Newman
7 Joan Rivers
8 Paul Simon
9 Steven Spielberg
10 Sigourney Weaver

Source: msstate.edu
Compiled at Roddy Lumsden's Vitamin Q site

So nothing much today has gone as planned. And those are even the plans I had to modify yesterday in response to events then. Sometimes I wonder if I should just chuck planning all together...but I'm not sure how you do that without becoming a complete vegetable...and it would drive me nuts anyway - maybe even more nuts that when my plans have to change.

So in my disgust I starting reading favorite blogs...and trying to find the one I was reading when my computer crashed the other day - still haven't found it - mostly 'cause I can't remember what it was called, but it sounded very interesting (and useful along the lines of the last post).

In my random internet wanderings I came across this series of pictures. Before you go there, note: you can change the music by clicking the down arrow in the top right hand corner. They certainly aren't Ansel Adams calibre, but I think these kinds of pictures say something about the choices we make when confronted with the kind of absurdity that the request to shoot a picture proving your camera isn't a bomb inspires in people. I looked at each of them, trying to imagine what the owner/photographer was thinking about as he/she snapped the shot. Some obviously just shot, not caring what was being recorded while others, faced with the demand to shoot a picture, felt the need to compose the shot - some even going so far as posing a subject.

Interesting, in one of those odd sort of ways. I think I'd like to see the rest of them.

Life's getting busy - probably seems busier than it should be 'cause I've gotten the first batch of student papers - always a joy *eye roll*. The one thing I dislike about the drafting process that we employ is when you tell a student to fix something in the first draft and it's still there in the final paper - erghh! I try not to take it personal, but each time I think "I am not making comments on papers because I just have so much damn time to spend doing it, or because I just love doing it - I'm doing it to teach you how to improve your writing!" Usually they pay attention, but it's the ones who need the most help who often refuse to take it. So I keep churning out the feedback and try not to get annoyed when students choose to ignore it - I only hope they return the favor and don't get too annoyed when they only get a C on the paper!

I've been starting to try to imagine a way that I can integrate all my various interests into three relatively coherent avenues of inquiry for the comprehensive exam next year (and the dissertation to follow eventually). I think it's just because it's the beginning of the year, but it might also have something to do a colleague who I greatly respect making ABD in the last few months. And he and I actually are interested in many of the same areas - science fiction, Celtic myth, memorializing in literature - so I guess I figure I need to be just as smart (though my performance on the preliminary comps last year was dismal to say the least, and not an auspicious start). He has managed to integrate many of the areas of interest by forming them all around the theme of memory. So I'm thinking I might be able to do the same thing with myth.

I'm not sure I really want to identify myself as a mythologist anymore than I wanted to be an Arthurian, but it might be a way of holding it all together. I will start to investigate the field to see if it's something I'd like to be working within for the rest of my career. That's the thing that's really starting to hit home with the idea of the comprehensives - they start to mark out a field that you will always be identified with, and I've generally resisted any kind of labelling that would see me aligned primarily with a single genre, period, or theoretical stance. I've been happy to dig into many different areas of inquiry - which provides a fairly broad overview of things, but is also at the same time much too shallow an approach for the dictates of the profession I want to enter.

I hate trying to figure this out! The things I really want to do don't all hang together in a way that will make me marketable in the future, so I need to tie them together in ways that maximize what I want and minimize the outside interference of themes, genres, theoretical or methodological stances etc that I don't want to study. But every time I think I've got it figured, I find something in the plan that I don't like. Ergh!

Too bad there wasn't such a thing as a PhD fairy godmother! I don't want to just get the degree handed to me - I just want a road map!

Our family - I would say entire, but there have been occasional moments when one or more family members have held out - has been watching the progress of the Sox - Yankees match-up over this week. Why do I suddenly find myself watching baseball, when I usually do not more than watch the occasional football game? Good question. Perhaps its just because I'd rather watch it than study, though I think that category is reserved for Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Perhaps it comes from having met some avid Sox fans who are actually intelligent too - making me wonder what I might be missing. Perhaps its because I'm having students skip class because they can't be bothered to get up in the morning after celebrating a victory the night before - the series dominates the airwaves and newspaper pages of this city. Perhaps because my book club meeting next weekend will potentially be rescheduled or cancelled to accomodate fans who would rather watch the game than read books - what gives with that!? Whatever it is, I've been watching - and will likely continue to watch till they lose.

Game 4 starts in a few minutes...the Sox need to win this one to tie the series back up at 2 and 2...otherwise, the next couple of games will be nailbiters.

Harvard Square stank today - I'd like to say it was a barnyard kind of smell, which it was occasionally, but I've been on farms, and the odor pervading the entire area was not the brand that cows, pigs, chickens etc. produce - it was the kind that only the human animal can produce with its diet rich in fats and carbohydrates. It was, to say the least, disgusting.

Now that we've moved, I don't always go through Harvard; sometimes I go through the next square down, where the bus stop usually smells of the remainders left behind by people who've drank too much the night before. Different brand of odor. Harvard usually ain't as bad, but today - ick! The place is usually pretty cool during the day and only gets dodgy at night, or early in the morning before the square is swept out, but today it had a particular charm.

I couldn't help but mourn the 20 minute ride in my own car, with my own music, to a reserved parking space that I had before I left. Now I travel and hour and a half (one way) through other people's filth in a public conveyance that is frequently pervaded with the same odors. And as the weather turns cool, I'm reminded that those conveyances frequently are not much warmer than the ambient temperature, which means I don't always warm up after my 10 to 15 minute walk to the stop. I suppose this won't matter five years from now. But right now, it's just depressing.

The major preoccupation of my life is still my state of health. I am happy that I have ditched the cane and can walk (mostly) without it. I'm not too bad in running shoes (sneakers in local parlance), but barefoot I am still barely doing better than hobbling. And my relative grace in walking depends on whether I've been sitting for a while, or already walking for a while. It doesn't even take long - sit for an hour, and I can barely move. Walk for five minutes, and I can imagine actually running again in a few weeks. It's a very 'divided' kind of sense of how well I'm recovering.

Other than that, I suppose my academics are benefitting since I'm not out doing anything, or exercising at all, though I'm feeling like I have cabin fever.

We did go out on Friday night over to the house of one of the other Alpha Omega members. Actually, it was this gorgeous loft apartment that looked like slightly lived in showroom, but it was a nice gathering. At one point in the night, it was just four of us around the table. It was the most Canadians I had hung out with since leaving home. Miss lots of people lots.