b l o g o s

Turning off 'the tubes'

Last night I read with interest a post at Bitch PhD's in which she asks around for software to help save her from what she aptly calls her "online lifestyle," namely (I gather) email and the internets. If you are reading this, you can probably know what Dr. B's talking about.

Even before the web got interesting, distractions were an obstacle for those with faraway deadlines. I remember my friend Ted in grad school marched into the TA offices one day, slammed two "Civilization" floppy disks on our friend Andy's desk and said "Keep these until I'm done with my dissertation." Andy, devoted friend that he is, locked them away. I also recall a fellow Spencer Foundation dissertator describing how she sought treatment for videogame addiction, and how her two sons were always whining because they could never play their shoot-em-up games. This is serious business!

At Dr. B's, there were some enthusiastic 'homegrown' suggestions like "shut off your router!" and "download parental control software!" And one of the reasons all these intrigued me was because I blew all day Sunday on the old laptop circuiting through my blogroll and newslinks and poking into others' but made nary a dent on my queue blog (a private blog where I keep my running list of things I promised others; the desktop doesn't cut it anymore, folks).

I had set aside the weekend expressly to read stuff for other people, and on Friday I finished one response, so I think I felt a little proud of myself and didn't do anything else for the entire weekend, except read the Sunday paper and noodle around online. And since I'm still waiting for my new timer to arrive so I can try the lifehack Jenny discovered, I figured I could go even more homegrown than the commenters over at Dr. B's. Homegrown and oldschool, that is. This morning, I did not check email until I finished a reader's report for a journal. Even turned off my cell phone. As many of you know, these reports can take hours. And I couldn't go entirely without online access, because I had to be online both to read the manuscript and to submit my report. But: no blogs. No news sites. No google. No weather.com: forecast of misery. Just this journal's manuscript clearinghouse site.

I got in such a groove that I moved directly to reading a cool article-in-progress for a grad student (kind of a pre-pre-reader's report). A quick lunch break followed by yet another reader's report for another journal, and then I checked email and went to the gym. Results? I didn't miss a thing online, and my queue blog is chock full of strikethroughs.

Take that, ya tubes!

joy, and pain

Joy:

Those of you who have been our houseguests--all 6 of you!--will be pleased to see our most recent addition. Now even NBA players can comfortably shower at our house, not to mention the vertical overachievers who reside here. John, who masterfully installed the thing, believes that our quality of life has improved by 3.2%.

I guess we'll have to find some other quirky house feature to complain about. I'll go ahead and nominate the condensation on the windows. Which leads me to the next point.

Pain:

I know most of you are probably feel my pain, but it is hot as fuck outside. Oh well, at least it's humid. heh.

This morning in hopes of avoiding the heat, we forced ourselves out of bed for an early run, but at 7:30 we were completely sweat-drenched. Ick.

job changer!

For the past couple of hours I've been bolted to my chair reading blog entries and comments over at New Kid's and Dr. Crazy's about a few different issues involved with going (back) on the job market. The comments get pretty wild, even accusatory. I am intrigued (from said comments) to see that I can, along with many others--New Kid, D(Jx3) and Z for starters--add another identifying label to my growing list of many: that of "job changer." Can't we at least come up with something cooler sounding, something frenchified, a la divorcée?

Best wishes to NK and DC in their searches. May they unflinchingly request those recommendation letters, receive lots of interviews and be able to make a choice about the next few years. May they dodge resentful (if ultimately affable) senior colleagues like "Kate," and with their grace and wit somehow manage to continue to give "a guy" the wrongheaded impression that job searches and location changes are "easier for a woman." (NK's replies to him are pretty funny, btw.)

academia can be sweaty work

I have slotted the morning and the early part of the afternoon today for compiling the materials for my grad course packet, which means lugging all the books and things first to my office so that I can make a trip to the library to retrieve the stray article I can't seem to find. Then, if everything goes well at the library, it'll be on to the local packet-making store so that they might get busy on copyright clearance and so that I might move on to other things.

The biggest question I faced this morning was how to transport all this stuff. I resolutely do not drive to campus since we live so close. And since biking will probably be easier, the question came down to whether the books will fit in my pannier or whether I need to break out the bike trailer. I broke out the bike trailer--the box contains about a dozen books, alas, not a dozen bottles of casillero del diablo. (Praise be to Spencer who told me about his trailer.) And also, for good measure, I broke out the sweatband.

[UPDATE]: after adding all the extra stuff from my campus office and the library, the packet outgrew the wine box, resulting in this:

But the bottom line is: it's IN. (If you are registered for the seminar; don't worry. I don't think the packet will be that thick.)

(1/4) milestones

Not too long ago, Exactly one month ago, John and I went out and ran some 400s, and they kicked our butts. But after only a month of doing them regularly (7 of them twice weekly), they have gotten easier, and we have gotten faster. Yesterday I met my summer goal for time, which is a good thing since summer is sadly almost gone, but more than that I exceeded said goal by 7 seconds, thereby just edging into the range of the big gals on my college team when we did these back then. Which for me=about as fast as I can hope to be. John got himself some really cool, fast track shoes and has beaten the times I can recall from even my speediest teammates, running his last one in 67 seconds. He is now contemplating a 5 minute mile. With those fast shoes and his long, long strides he just might do it.

Luckily we don't compete with each other when it comes to times, though as he sweetly put it, if our times in seconds equal our respective lifespans, then I'm a winner.

shouts to the outs

In case it's not part of your normal summer reading, I wanted to call your attention to Josh Gunn's piece in IHE. He's one of rhetoric's own, and this piece stands as a strong refutation for misguided claims from the rhet comp side that comm-rhet folks don't think about pedagogy. Rock!

this happens more than you'd think

At the bank with Nancy getting added as a signatory for while they are away, the following conversation ensued:

bank employee, to me: are you a student?
me: no, faculty.

b.e.: at Parkland (the local community college)? [both of these while still staring at my U of I faculty i.d.]
me: no, U of I.

b.e. to her coworker, after I filled out the form: have I covered everything?
coworker: did he sign in both places?

nightsweats

Have you ever lost sleep over someone else's nightmares? I haven't, until tonight, when John started awake and at my urging recounted a chilling dream involving some sort of lamp accident, lots of blood loss, a failed 9-1-1 call, a period of unconsciousness in the front yard, and a missing spouse. 

yeez.

so long, it'll be the same without you

Dear Z and N:

Here's what I--and perhaps others--wanted to say to you at the goodbye gathering last night but then decided to keep drinking instead:

I am beginning to understand why familial metaphors take hold in a large department like ours. Especially in the early part of people's careers, there is really very little choice about where they end up, and if there's any logic to hiring at all, it's guided by a subtle kind of institutional genetics. That's how we get tossed together. And yet genetics, as everyone knows, can be as random as it is selective, and so it's damned rare when people who get thrown together in such a way actually end up liking each other--really liking each other (again, families are often a good example). The place where families--and departments--seem to go wrong is when they assume that the peculiarities of genetics yield (or should yield) sameness. You never seemed to want us to be different from how we are but were happy to hang out and eat and drink and see just how long we can sustain certain jokes. And so when we say that it won't be the same here without you, we know that in the scheme of things it really will be the same and that it was just pleasantly different while you both were here.

The places you are going will be different too, and--perhaps it goes without saying--better for it.

mmm, cake.