b l o g o s

getting my butch on

It started when JM left to visit his fam last week, and his departure roughly corresponded with the arrival of our new, but too big, dryer. I took a circular saw and a jig saw to the countertop, and voila, it now fits. Other projects have involved hanging a pot rack in our kitchen (see pic below), replacing pvc pipes under the basement sink (which involved the very stinky pvc cement), and adding a shelf to our pantry. And then today, I put on a dust mask and vacuumed the excess insulation out of our attic, from where we had it blown in a month ago--a huge energy saver, and also a huge mess.

The rack and the new shelf have brought much-needed order to our kitchen, and as soon as I buy some giant garbage bags, I'll finish the attic job by filling those bags with clothes and other stuff we don't use and taking them off to goodwill. I admit too that I am now eying our tiny half bath its ugly little sink and its cheap linoleum that covers what we know to be a pretty pine floor, and I wouldn't be surprised if I found myself checking prices on sander rentals. All of this order will allow me to more properly get my sabbatical on.

if our dogs were characters on "The Office"

Jada would be Angela

and

Tillie would be Kelly.

coasters from E!

comparatives

1. The only thing worse than a loud cell phone talker is a loud cell phone talker dramatically rendering a rather undramatic story about how she managed to catch her train by offering a license-less cab driver fifty bucks to get her to union station. And then hanging up and dialing someone else to tell the exact same story.

2. The only thing worse than a line cutter is a line cutter who proceeds to hold up the line because she has not had her i.d. checked like those of us in line, and whose i.d. is swimming around somewhere in the dark depths of a massive Louis Vuitton backpack.

3. The only thing worse than someone talking loudly about how tall you are is someone doing so because they need you to reach something for them. And then the loud talker turns out to be someone who works at the grocery store who needs every bottle of balsamic vinegar all the way to the back of the top shelf, the last few of which are unreachable for even the tallest of women. And then the person thanks you by encouraging you to apply for a job there.

year-in-review meme

as seen at See Jane Compute:

The rule: post the first sentence of the first post for each month. Here are the ones that appear at blogos.

January: Fish chowder and cheese biscuits.

February: Hear ye! Hear ye! Let it be known that February 14, 2007 will mark the observation of "Happy Woman Professor Day," a day inspired by a depressing google search string and comments on that search string (including my own overly cynical one).

March: I'll just add to Spencer's photosummary of our campus's proud tradition of Unofficial St. Patrick's Day by noting that my down-the-hall colleague L discovered a barely conscious student on the floor of the women's room, her hair splaying out from under a stall door.

April: My end-of-semester assignment for my first-year rhetoric course has students working all semester, tracking an issue in The New York Times so that they might comment, in the end, on the twists and turns in arguments about a particular issue, and so they can attend to kairos (rhetorical timing) in real time, as events unfold.

May: [title included here] That which does not kill you still might not make your grade stronger, especially wrt professor hawhee's perfect-spelling-of-proper-names (surprise!) bonus.

June: I most likely won't have time to post here very much between now and our textbook deadline next week, so I leave you with the song--and the character--that will be in my head til then.

July: "Meanwhile, the fabulously halcyon weather continues here. Conditions have been ideal for both working and basking." (Kenneth Burke to John Crowe Ransom, February 6, 1957)

August: getting up at 6 am and reading and writing until 9, up to, through, and past a major organizational breakthrough on the book's last chapter; running over to and alongside lake michigan before showering and catching the red line down to the most delicious thai restaurant for lunch; writing four more sentences on the front and back of a chopsticks wrapper; walking to a super cool--too cool in fact, but who tf cares?--salon to get a sharp haircut; and then catching the red line back up to an incredibly charming used bike shop recommended by a savvy local (ty, mp); falling head over wheels for, and buying, a classic brown schwinn victory with brand new tires and a meticulous new handlebar tape job; and then tooling all over the place, including back over to the lake and up and down and then over to the chicago diner for a plate full of spicy wheatballs and roasted root vegetables and a vegan peanut butter shake.

September: Those rare productive spells are enabled (for me at least) by periods of varying duration in which I do not write (oh, and obv. getting tf out of town helps too, apparently).

October: When people find out I'm not teaching this semester, they are also surprised to learn how busy I am.

November: During the normal course of trick-or-treating, a band of girls, age 13 or 14, rings the doorbell.

December: I don't really tend to compose those lists of 100 or whatever things about myself, but if I did, one of the items on it would be my childhood fascination with Evel Knievel.

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What a mixture:  the worky and the not-worky,  the mundane and the really mundane (phew that April one is a real snoozer), the sentences and the non-sentences.

 

 

so THAT's where I learned to dance

OFL on my id card (again)

My university i.d. card is so faded that yesterday a librarian (not OFL, but the down-to-business English woman with glasses on a chain) cheerfully told me that I ought to consider picking up my new i.d. card with all the shiny security trappings. She told me this while she was manually entering my library number because the scanner couldn't detect the bar code.

Today, though, OFL was running the stacks entry. When I presented my card to her, she stared at it for 20 seconds or so. And then:

OFL: It kind of reminds me of the Mona Lisa.
Me, a little bored, a little flattered, having never been compared to something so, well, classy: Oh yeah?
OFL, sighing: No one knows if it's the paint that makes her yellow or if she was anemic. What do you think?
Me: I'm going with hepatitis.
OFL, getting up to go back to circulation, calling back over her shoulder: Some say she was pregnant. But that's probably just somebody starting a crazy rumor.

prepping for sabbatical

Damn, it can take a lot of work to get ready for sabbatical. Here are some of the things I've done over the past couple of weeks in that vein:

- composed and sent a long email to my seven advisees explaining how things are going to work (huge thanks to caraf and the now-delurked professor in the field [aka professor delurk], both of whom sent me the emails they sent to their advisees before their sabbaticals). Basically I'll give feedback to their writing electronically, but otherwise they're pretty much on their own for a few months (except for the one exam taker). Oh, and in the Cara mode, I requested that they send me calendars with their self-projected and other-projected deadlines, so that they and their smart work don't disappear into the ether, and so I can get a jump on any remaining recommendations.

- composed and sent a shorter email to the graduate students for whom I am a committee member (ten total), also telling them how it's gonna be. Received a lot of nice replies to that one, aw.

- procured a library faculty carrel, a room slightly smaller than my wingspan squared, with a desk, some shelves, a big bright fluorescent light, and (crucially) a door that locks. Since this is to be a research-heavy sabbatical, and since I am not allowed in my office, this is where I will stash my books and stuff while traipsing around the library. I will also read there, but most days for reading I will likely decamp to one of the library's many lovely and spacious locations with gigantic windows. The precise location of the carrel will not be disclosed, but it is next to a faculty member who reads her writing out loud to herself.

- Readied my big nice office for K, who will use it to write her dissertation. I will also be retaining K to help with the RSA and QJS mail, and so today I wrote out a 'triage' sheet to help her sort through it all. I also emptied my "out" basket so that now it's an "in" basket. I will only come in on the occasional weekend to toss and/or take what's there.

- Returned a bunch of library books in order to stem the recall and overdue emergencies which just clutter up my brain.

- Restarted on the reading for the co-authored piece, reading that I just discovered yesterday happens to overlap a little with another article I'm planning on rhetoric's (historical) relation to geometry. I'll do a fair bit of writing on this sabbatical, but what I'm really, really excited about is the reading. I'm always saying how envious I am of my grad students who are prepping for their exams: "all that time to read!" I say, "You'll never have it again!" But the truth is they might.

- Started weaning myself off email. Yep, this is work. Those of you who email with me know that I tend to be pretty prompt with my replies. Not during sabbatical! These past few days I've gone hours without checking, which is a big effing deal for me. Next semester I'm hoping to check my email only a couple times a week, though I'm not sure I'm capable of that. We'll see. The verdict is still out on putting up one of those out-of-office replies. Hm.

- Edited all the QJS book reviews I have, and sent out gentle queries for the ones I'm lacking. I'm half-a-batch ahead, so that work should be fairly minimal.

-  Began lining up novels. Because there's only so much work-related reading a girl can do in a day, carrel or no. Recommendations for new novels are welcome! I just finished Atonement (awesome), and am loving The Exception.   

And don't worry, professor delurk! I am planning to do fun stuff too; it's just that paring back non-research-related work takes a lot more effort than booking a flight or packing a suitcase or making a cake or sanding down a floor.
 

2

The twos have a reputation for being demanding and fretful. So maybe we should all go ahead and wish blogos a happy second blogiversary before it messes its diaper.

dear animal collective,

Please play in Chicago again soon. Or Indianapolis. Or St. Louis. Or Madison.

Strawberry Jam is so deliciously noisy I can't stop listening to it.