b l o g o s

town to town, up and down the dial

I am nearly finished packing two suitcases for trips to two very different parts of the country, climate wise. Headed to DC/Maryland tomorrow morning; back on Tuesday. Then I have fewer than 24 hours at home before my flight leaves for NOLA, where I'm going for an evening to help celebrate Sharon Crowley's retirement. It's hard to believe that Sharon is retiring; the field won't be the same. Let's just say that on all these plane trips I'll be dusting off my encomium-writing skills. Meantime, I'm really looking forward to seeing and meeting everyone at UMD!

dear chicago,

When I first moved to Illinois, I would visit you occasionally, pay lots and lots of dollars to park my car, catch a glimpse of your shimmery dark blue lake, shop on Michigan Avenue, eat dinner on Rush. We flirted from a distance, you and me. I pretended to know you. But I did not know you. You remained something of a puzzle to me, the insides of so many color-coded parking garages, the glimmery storefronts. Without the Sears Tower in my view I never knew which direction I was going.

But today while I was walking the not-very-scenic two miles down Chicago Ave from the Newberry to my salon, past the Tribune building (really, what westerly route doesn't take you past the Tribune building? That thing is a monster), across the terrifying draw bridge and then (later, on Ogden) the vertiginous interstate overpass, past a shrill and rather uninventive shouting match at a bus stop--"you a punkass bitch!" "no, YOU a punkass bitch!"--I began to realize that seven + years later, I know you so much better. And now, having eaten my way through the entire menu at the Chicago Diner, having gotten lost on foot and on bike in your north and midsections, and having learned the crucial lesson to avoid Michigan avenue altogether, I have finally pieced you together in all your complexity, and I can say with all sincerity that I love you.

yours,
debbie

netflix blogging: rocket science

A couple others have started netflix blogging, so why not jump on in? Tonight JM and I watched Rocket Science (trailer below), a Rushmore-meets-Election venture with very good writing and quite compelling supporting characters. We both particularly liked the slightly unhinged, but also in his own way tender, thief brother, oh, and the tantric couple playing orchestral versions of violent femmes songs is also pretty amusing. And with Eef Barzelay (the singer and guitarist from Clem Snide) in charge of the score, well, what's not to like?

when self loathing becomes productive

I'm happy to report that today I reached that stage in the life of my current writing project (a collaborative article) in which I got so disgusted with myself that I actually began to write. I bet you know what I mean: that point where you keep nattering around on the internet in the name of "research," reading articles that are only tangentially related to the one you are writing, or in some cases not at all (this is NOT to slight the amazing availability of almost any journal I looked for yesterday; god, our library rocks).

But here's a case in point: yesterday, while looking for an article in a journal called Wordsworth Circle I came across a new piece by my friend and colleague who has started working on climate change in the 19th century. Which one did I read more carefully--the one I set out to get that had only a passing reference to Wordsworth's use of David Hartley, or the one about John Constable's cloud paintings? (I loved it by the way.) Sigh. These are all activities that can be called work, but at this point they are sheerly avoidance tactics. I made up my mind to get up this morning and write no matter what! Two full hours of writing, I promised.

And so I woke up, made my hot morning drink, opened the Priestley book to the page where I wanted to begin writing, and hit check on my email. And lo, down came a long-awaited message about book contract negotiations. A few email exchanges with a press, a dog walk, a phone call from E! and an attractive lunch invitation from JM later, and I hadn't gotten a single minute of my pledged two hours of work in. So I set the damn timer that I bought after reading a post Jenny made a long time ago about getting things done (GTD), and I made myself write for four thirty-minute increments, checking email only after those thirty minutes were up. At the end of that I now have a (too-long) part of a section that I think my coauthor and I can work with.

I rarely write after lunch, and if I do it means I'm either on a roll or under a deadline. But this afternoon I was neither. I was just pissed at myself. 

new rules

Once upon a time when I started this blog, I made some promises. One of those promises was that I wouldn't blog about "my body." This post may or may not cross that line, but today JM and I started a weight-training program. I have not had a hard core weight-lifting regimen since before the car wreck that fucked up my shoulder and neck a few years ago. Repeated attempts to get back into lifting resulted in re-injury, meaning I would end up back in the old neck brace. It wasn't worth it. So I just went with all the cardio exercises and yoga and pilates, and trusted that this would maintain strong, healthy muscles. And for the most part, I guess it has.

But when JM mentioned that he was interested in training with weights, I bit. We even bought a book, which is JM's way (ask him about his books on cleaning the house or individual retirement accounts). This book is called New Rules of Lifting. There's one for men and one for women, but since JM doesn't have masculinity issues (and I apparently do), we bought the one for women. The cover says "how to lift like a man and look like a goddess."

I actually don't aspire to either of these, nor do I appreciate the author's attempts to appeal to women by using punning chapter titles such as "Core of Babylon"--does he know that he's replacing whore?--but I do like the philosophy of this book, which goes against most everything I've ever been taught about weight training.

The author claims that isolating and working little muscles to exhaustion (e.g., bicep curls, tricep extensions, etc.) accomplishes little in terms of the body's overall strength and capacity. Instead, the book promotes weight-training exercises that work a lot of muscle groups at once, and they all involve core muscles (e.g., squats, upright row, pushups). The argument here is that these exercises train the muscles in the way we use them everyday, imitating movements that are familiar to us like standing and sitting (squats) or picking one's self up off the ground--though I guess in academia that's  more typically metaphorical.

The book gives, like, 10 different workouts. And it occurred to me when I was working on the step-ups with dumbbells, that the isolation approach might be exactly why I kept reinjuring myself. If I stick with movements that recruit other muscles as well, I might avoid injury. And yes, I know that this is the very logic in favor of isolation exercises--that the muscles will get stronger precisely because they can't recruit bigger muscles to help. But I'm willing to suspend that in the interest of experimentation. I'm pretty sure I won't end up looking like Athena, but maybe--just maybe--I'll be able to avoid the neck brace.

found time (and money)

We were going to go up to Chicago tomorrow, but the person who stays with our dogs has some heinous stomach flu (poor thing), so instead of taking pooches with to the dog-friendly hotel, we opted to cancel and stay home. It's going to be cold in Chicago anyway. Also, this means I  have more time to spend with Joseph Priestley, whose scientific experiments with cabbages and batteries are pretty entertaining. Also more time to cook. I'm going to try to talk JM into spending every penny we were going to spend on travel and lodging and dog care on something outlandish. Wish me luck.

are your colleagues moonlighting for fisher price?

Click image to go directly to the site. Thanks to T for passing this along.

spring! break!

As Metaspencer mentions, and as I expect the now not-so-anonymous Oronte Churm might soon reveal, the University's spring break started today. Hooray! Even though I'm on sabbatical, I still feel this break, because email has trickled to a halt, and I also feel this spring, because it was a nice sunny day here. Somehow running a bunch of errands is easier without a big poofy coat.

Also the beginning of break corresponded with payday and a Friday, which means we stood in line at the bank. Later, post-grocery shopping, we decided that we wanted to enjoy the sunshine but our feet were too sore from running yesterday, so we hopped on our bikes and rode down to the pretty prairie park and threw frisbee and also played catch. And now we're going to make some fish curry and spicy cabbage. Tomorrow we're driving out to the CSA-farm to buy some eggs and some meat and generally to tour the countryside. We both have talks to write over break, but toward the end, we're going to reward ourselves by training to Chicago for some fun city time.

I quite like living here. There it is.   

call and response

The question of what makes someone feel called to respond to a listserv post is one that interests me. I'm on one particular listserv in which the majority of the posters are dudes, and one dude in particular posts many, many, many times a week. I think he's retired or something. Anyway, in my busiest times I tend not to read them, and in my less busy times I skim over them. A little skirmish broke out last week with Joshie, and I wrote to him off list and asked him why I don't just sign off the damn list since the topic is rarely directly about the topic that ostensibly organizes the listserv in the first place. Why, indeed?

I am prompted to ask this question about why I in particular am moved to respond when I do. I don't do it often. But today there are a bunch of posts about the Spitzer debacle, and one listserv member wrote that "He [Spitzer] behaved foolishly and gave into the temptations built into his body."

And it was then that I chose to respond. I was no more or less incensed than I was when people were going after Josh (unfairly I might add). Josh can take up for himself, and did quite nicely, thank you. But today I felt like someone needed to make the feminist point here--that the whole scene is more likely about power than it is about biology--a point that E! just made on the phone an hour before the listserv post came across. I mean, the idea that he was arranging these trysts with prostitutes because of a bodily need also implicitly blames his wife, no? I didn't even write that, choosing instead just to make a quick point about the danger of thinking this is wholly about biology and then hitting send. And then I wondered, was that necessary? It sure felt necessary.   

ha! and wha? best and worst quotes about the spitzer swan dive

Seth Greenland, writing for the Huffington Post: "Frankly, I am amazed he got his wife to appear with him at the news conference, given the media frenzy. If I recall, James McGreevey, the part-time homosexual former Governor of New Jersey had his wife glued to his arm when he faced the media during his excoriation. Do these guys drug their spouses? My wife would knee-cap me."

A response from Spitzer's brother Daniel Spitzer, a neurosurgeon, is quoted in the Wall Street Journal: "If men never succumbed to the attractions of women, then the human species would have died out a long time ago."