Bismarck is the capital of North Dakota, not SD. Have I made my point clear that geography is no longer about rivers and state capitals?!
Ok, weight loss surgery (WLS). B. is scheduled this Tuesday for a gastric bypass operation. It is a NON-REVERSIBLE procedure to create a smaller stomach so that you eat less for the rest of your life. So many aspects of this are scary that I hardly know where to begin. In chronological order then -
1. any surgery is risky, both during the procedure itself and from the possibility of clots or infections right afterwards.
2. will he really miss eating certain foods that won't agree with him? They say you can eat almost anything, but the reality is that fatty or sugary foods aren't tolerated, and because you have to eat "so much" protein, there's no room in the meal planning for food with no nutrients.
3. will planning and excuting meals become unbearably complicated and burdensome?
4. will he require a lot of nursing care for a long time? Based on my lackluster nursing job when he had kidney stone surgery in January, I am not looking forward to an extended role as nurse.
5. will he gain boundless energy (good) and since I've adjusted my exertion downwards over the years, will I be unable to keep up (bad)?
6. will this divergence of energy levels drive us apart? And then he'll find some cute young thing and I'll be OUT?
7. how will we recreate a social life that does not revolve around food?
8. are there long-term problems with this type of surgery that aren't understood yet?
Ok, enough fear. The reason for doing this is to get back a future that is not jam-packed with medical problems: heart attacks, diabetes and amputations (like his father), diabetes, stroke and paralysis (like his mother). That's probably worth sacrificing some potato chips and chocolate cake for.
I can't think about it any more right now. More later, as we discuss and ponder over the course of the day. He can cancel out anytime right up until they put him under.
B. said at dinner, "you haven't written much in your blog lately, huh? Falling behind, aren't you?"
With that kind of pressure, here I am. Ah, negative reinforcement - it's what REALLY motivates me.
For those who read yesterday's entry about my data issues, I am pleased to report that I was correct: using departmental totals means that geography is an even smaller proportion of college majors than if you just use declared majors. Why? Because economics and journalism and poli sci are all full of gung-ho top students who declare their PRE-MAJOR the minute they arrive on campus. Geography, on the other hand, gets the dreamers and the indecisives and the students who've been kicked out of other majors for insufficient achievement. No pre-majors here, no sir. Major in rivers and state capitals? No thank you.
But we're not bitter, no, not at all.
I have a couple of things to write about: aging (from spending a week with my parents); and weight loss surgery. But I'll leave that for the weekend; it's what that Dissertation-in-1/4-Hour-per-Day book calls "parking on a downhill." There's real momentum in finishing what you have to say, but in still having an idea where you're going next, in order to start the next day's work.
And speaking of which, I forgot to write lease conditions this afternoon. I was supposed to write them yesterday. We (it is to be hoped) have new tenants!!
Is Bismarck in SD or ND? I really have no idea.
No administrative meeting tomorrow, which is good. If I can get into a groove at the office, I'll be able to build a couple of spreadsheets in short order. I am going to compare faculty ratios (per student in the major) and student credit hours across a variety of majors. I've already done this once, but the committee wants it reparsed because they think it will be more favorable. I disagree and I am looking forward to proving myself right.
Finished a book on the Versailles Treaty this afternoon - the first chance I've had for sustained reading in I-don't-know-when. The author is rather an apologist for the Big Four, fighting the conventional attitude that Versailles alone set in motion the factors that led to WW2. He seems to say that they did their best with an extremely complicated situation, given the parameters of their divergent economic and political interests, the personalities involved, and their respective philosophical bents.
I find the issues about self-determination and national identity the most interesting. What, for example, did it mean to be "Polish" between 1795 and 1918? My mom, when she was here last week, reminisced a bit about her father. She thinks he was born around 1889 and came to the US around 1906, when he was 17. Two brothers were already here; one or more sisters stayed "there" wherever there is. My mom thinks it was somewhere in Prussia.
He immediately became a citizen, because he was drafted in 1917. Toward the end of the war he was sent to Alsace/Lorraine to help with interpreting, since of course he spoke German natively. She wondered aloud what it felt like to fight against the country of your birth, and she is going to copy some of the papers she has so that we can perhaps piece this story together more completely.
The political tie to the soil seems among the most interesting and complicated of human relationships to me. If one wonders why people don't flee from war or famine or other disaster, one begins to appreciate the magnitude of that tie of "homeland." It ripples out from the earth to connect with other people, in national pride, or a sense of national character, or goes over to the dark side in nationalism (where some parts of the US seem to be headed at the moment).
Thus my interests clarify: political geography; notions of statehood and nationality; national identity. It has good ties to literature too - a sigh of relief for the possibilities for the future.
Why do we all blog, I wonder? Surely not to raise our "standings" in the "Blogs with the most entries" list! I'm disappointed though to have dropped so low, but it's my own doing as I've not been writing here.
Or anywhere, actually: not working on my journal articles, not writing in my private journal.
I just emailed a friend I haven't been in contact with for a couple of years and told her about my blog, which got me thinking of what got me started on this. I am guessing it was in the summer or fall of 2000, when I googled (back in the day it was Alta Vista or possibly Lycos - remember them?) this person I had a little crush on and found him cast as the hero in a blog entry of a fellow student, for helping her through a domestic violence crisis.
So I read her blog for awhile (I still do sometimes) and that led to others. Two years ago, when I was unemployed and not going to school and nor working very seriously on my novel, and therefore really desperate for mental stimulation, I started reading lots of other blogs. I admired the writers' gutsiness for putting their lives out on the line for all to read, and I wanted to do the same. When the U debuted blogs this spring, I couldn't wait to get started.
I don't write every day because I don't feel I have something fresh to say every day. I love the spontaneity and candor of writers like http://blog.lib.umn.edu/piep0058/loverboy/, but it is hard for me to be so open about my life. Even though I love to read the daily details of others' lives, I feel readers would be bored by mine. Constantly seeking approval, gack. I wish I weren't, but I can't change who I am.
So for me, blogging is a form of daily writing practice - a way to practice writing FOR READERS (as opposed to my journal, which is just for me) in a way that is clear and focused and - it is to be hoped - even elegant once in a while.
Why do you keep - or read - a weblog?
We are off to the glorious perennial border at the Sculpture Garden. Probably not mini-golf, though.
I am thinking about a body image and food entry, but I need to think it through a little more. I am wondering when I started to fetishize food, and how I can stop it. With my parents' perspective of food as basic sustenance, my food habits are starting to feel a bit precious.
Man, I HATE not writing more frequently. But my parents have been here since Tuesday, and the pattern of my daily routine has changed: sightseeing; sitting on the porch and chatting; watching movies. It's great to have them here, but it makes me realize how much of my time was solitary and word-related: reading, writing, surfing.
In stray spare moments lately I've read "How to Write Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day." The title is a big fat lie - it's about preparing yourself psychologically for the various phases of a dissertation rather than any constructive plan for actually doing the work.
I was hoping for more advice on sussing out a topic. Perhaps I should just read the theory of transitions book on post socialist cities, and take it from there...
I went to a meeting last week that ended up being about time management. (Is there anyone who will admit to having time on their hands?! Being busy is some sort of macho - but equi-gendered - badge of honor: I'm SOOOO busy; I have SOOO much to get done.) There was the usual whining about the uniqueness of one's time demands (Is there anyone who will admit that they are LESS busy than other people they know?!) and then a sharing of a spate of techniques, touted as the New Thing, to manage time more effectively, when in reality business consultants have been teaching these techniques to the rest of the world for three or four decades.
Ah, academe. So out of touch.
In my view (because I can't resist being a Time Management Consultant to these over-important people), there are only two ways to free up time: 1) do less; and 2) do everything faster. It's like losing weight - eat less, or burn more calories. Everything else is, so to speak, gravy. The "do less" strategy was broached at this meeting, but the person who raised it was stomped on because he suggested that one's colleagues might be able to provide a second opinion to help one figure out what projects are no longer relevant and should be dropped: "How dare someone presume to tell me what I should or should not work on?! They don't know my work as I do!"
Again, I say: Ah, academe.
I haven't been doing any serious reading lately, which is why I am crabbing about meetings instead of musing about European history. B. guilted me into starting the Neil Stephensonson trilogy. I am about 1/4 through the first book, and it's fabulous!! - in the root sense as well as the populist sense of the word. Ah, well - what's a summer for if not to enjoy life? Theorizing the transition to capitalism will still be a problem in September and I will deal with it then.
Up for ninety minutes already, and what have I done? Some file maintenance, some blog reading, some surfing. I am trying to read the BBC news online every day, in order to follow issues in Central Europe. I've actually adjusted to reading the Minneapolis Star-Tribute (it took some doing, after decades of the Boston Globe!) but it doesn't cover international news too thoroughly. In particular, I'm looking for urban issues in Poland that might be a path to a dissertation topic.
Checked irs.gov this morning, and WHEW!!! the automatic extension for 1040s is for four months, not three. So I don't have to spend the day doing my taxes - it can wait until August 14 (which it inevitably will).
Big doings on the Champs Elysees this morning (see, that BBC thing is already paying dividends) - it's the 100th anniversary of the Entente Cordiale, so a token number of British military personnel are marching in the Bastille Day parade. It makes me smile a little, thinking of the sometime gap between political style and substance. Yeah, the British and French are great friends now, eh, but this commemoration of the entente that ultimately paid off in the alliance during WWI commemorates strategic and poltical necessity, not the free and open choice of partners. I suppose it is ever so in Geopolitik.
I've been having anxiety dreams again - last night that I wasn't doing a good enough job as the assistant night manager of a supermarket (my broom was too small and it took FOREVER to sweep an aisle); the night before I dreamed that I was late to a professional conference because I wasn't sure where and when it was, and I called my secretary and she was NOT helpful in unraveling my schedule, my fault for having such a messy office and not communicating well with my staff. (Also she had an major attitude problem, but that's her issue, not mine.) It's kind of interesting how feeling that "I'm not getting enough done this summer in real life" morphs into those two very different experiences during the night.
The Daily Spirit-Human had a good entry yesterday about focusing on the journey, not the goal. See http://blog.lib.umn.edu/carl1236/dailyspirit/. I'm so goal-oriented that that way of thinking seems mysterious and sort of slacker-like. In some ways I regret that 16 years of my life just floated by in my planning job; I had no plan or path, just got up and went to work every day. I think more, and focused, self-interrogation would have been helpful.
I've now finished two regions of the ten in the World Regional Geography text that I'm reading: Europe and Russia/environs. Depressing, really: between the trashed economies, the trashed environment, and the wars and human suffering, it's not an attractive picture of life for most beings on this planet. And it's just gonna get worse as we head toward "the Global South" (the new PC-appropriate term for the Third World).
Warning: gross oversimplification follows: Republicans are happily optimistic about the US ("morning in America, e.g.) and Democrats are darkly realistic. Republicans are cheerleaders (or ostriches perhaps); Democrats are mechanics. Partly this is a function of the Republican incumbency, but I think Republicans are less willing in general to admit that anything could be wrong in this great country, and Democrats are more introspective and self-questioning. If you don't agree, answer this: why is most of academe of the liberal persuasion?
I don't think you should be able to be logged into the U with your X.500 password simultaneously from two computers...but you can. I started an entry here yesterday, forgot about it, went to work, logged in there, came home. Odd.
It finally occurred to me today that the reason I've been avoiding re-reading my previous papers on Western Front trenches in order to see if there is an article there is that I am loath to confront my bad, old writing and muddled, old ideas. What if there is nothing there worth writing about at all? But I took a deep breath and found the first paper, and in the very first paragraph I have established what I'm going to write about and why it matters. So there may be hope.
Proof of my lack of focus: I'm now also reading an undergraduate textbook on World Geography, part of my mission of cramming an undergraduate education in the field into an already-overcommitted summer. In some ways it's easier reading than the other stuff I have in the hopper, but at the same time it's very detailed and fact-filled.
The summer is half over. Bah hambug. I wish every day could be like this one, right through til Labor Day: cool, crisp, sunny. I rode to work today and was, for once, relaxed enough to enjoy it.
Faculty do not like it when you (as a grad student) treat them as equals. But I keep "forgetting my place" and doing it anyway. I'll save the details for a clever screed called something like "The Chip in the Ivory Tower." I've always found these sorts of power relations interesting (particularly once I had a position of power and could "play" people for my own amusement), especially the subtle clues of language and body position that indicated what the person thought his or her status was.
Exercising the Freedom to Consume Conspicuously (what, you missed that one in the Bill of Rights?!) we finally bought a DVD player yesterday that came with surround sound. Now the living room has a spaghetti-bowl full of wires running in all directions (Six! Speakers!) and the sound is fantasic - but alas we still can't get the video feed working. B. anticipates that the RCA helpline people, when they are back at work tomorrow, will probably say that our TV is too old to accommodate this setup. It's Techno-Creep - buy a new TV to handle the bargain-price DVD player. We DID find the original TV remote in a bagful of remotes in the closet, but that doesn't seem to be helping.
Ooh, it's working now!! Channel 91, who would have thought?
The trouble with window AC units is that you can't open the window until you remove the AC - although I suppose if you had double-hung windows that really functioned as they should, you could open the top sash.
The air outside is pleasant - a relief after these few days of humidity - and we should open up some windows and let the air in. We installed the second AC on Friday, before all our dinner guests came over, and then yesterday we switched the two so that the quieter one would be in our bedroom and the larger one would be in the living room. No shortage of windows here in this apartment (all with dysfunctional storm windows, ack), so the remainder of the weekend should be comfortable.
What's interesting about the Treaty of Versailles is how little agreement there was on the part of the victors about how Europe (and the colonies) should be shaped. It's more than just colliding interests - the statesmen themselves held quite different worldviews, from Wilson's optimistic attitude that a coalition of nations could police the world, to the more cynical and punishment-seeking views of the others. The treaty process was hugely complicated and took almost a year to work out. No focus on Poland yet - Stachura might be right about how its concerns and interests were not taken seriously in the process.
I've collected all my materials on trenches, and I looked on Thursday at two possible venues for submission. I also formulated some questions that I think my research answers that make it a new contribution to the literature. Articles in these two journals, though, don't use that metacommentary technique of outlining what they are up to upfront. On one hand, that makes them seem intellectually sophisticated; on the other, the articles sort of meander with no clear objective in the reader's mind. I like the folksiness of Historical Geography. I doubt if "folksiness" is in my stylistic future, however.
The humidity is sucking my will to live.
I was late to work because I fell asleep reading about the Treaty of Versailles.
There is cat-barf on the back stairs.
We don't have a cat.
We are going to see a Saints (baseball, probably AA) game shortly.
My advisor is coming to dinner tomorrow. Not because he's MY advisor, but because our friend J invited him to the night of film noir with us, and he's J's advisor. J is a vegetarian, hence we are having corn fritters for dinner.
Enough. I have to go flip the laundry.