Coming up is the last week of classes (except for the class I teach, which ended on Thursday night; I've been procrastinating about grading their final papers).
This morning I made a "schedule" for studying Polish that will allow me to connect some things that were touched on in different ways in different chapters. I decided this was necessary based on a funny (to me) eureka moment in class this week. I asked what was the gender of Niemcy, the word for Germany. "It's not known - but it's plural so it doesn't matter," said my professor. Well, I was mystified by that - wouldn't you need to know the gender to know what adjectival endings to use? He was not really getting my question, so I flipped to the grammar summary at the back of the book, and guess what? All the plural adjective endings are the same across genders!
I had never really thought about that - I learned them by gender, and never realized they were all the same. So my mental grammar compartments have just had a merger. I suspect there are other like commonalities that will help me to reinforce what I know, and to learn what I've forgotten this term.
In other work: a paper for history and some reading lite for my proseminar. Then full speed ahead for prelims - I have to work out a plan and a schedule so that we can decide if/when to head for the E Coast for a couple of weeks in May/June, before my job "starts" on the 13th.
We also have to decide whether to sell the house. We're inclined not to, at the moment.
Also: I slept through the middle of Kung Fu Hustle last night.
...and it's shooting pseudoephedrine.
Piles of grading to do, but I would prefer to blog.
I am undecided: should I rant about politics? or rave about springtime?
I choose the rant.
The same Legislature that "protects" our right to bear arms and shoot each other with our concealed, carried weapons (such as those in Red Lake) is the same Legislature that thinks Sudafed is a scourge on the nation, and should be banned.
I have suffered from intermittent sinus pain since 1984. I am not sure why I have this pain, but the only thing that relieves it is pseudoephedrine. My condition is better since I left the high-stress job on the East Coast, but it occasionally flares up, and I am not happy that I might have to drive to WISCONSIN (some of my best friends are from there...) to stock up. It's good that the border is so close.
I do not understand the thinking of the members of the Legislature. Maybe it's an electoral calculus: citizens of the state who own guns versus those who might buy OTC pseudoephedrine. I abhor guns. But I do enjoy being able to purchase a medication that assuages my pain. It is not the fault of its makers that it can be used to produce meth. Back in 1978, when I was a freshman, the lab demonstration was this: place amounts of various primordial gases in a sealed vessal. Spark with energy simulating lightning every few seconds. Watch amino acids and other complex "biological" compounds appear.
It's all a chemical factory, folks. Except that it's really hard to reconstitute the complex organism that you extinguish with a bullet.
Info on the whole capital gains thing.
(for printing when I have free, double-sided copy access)
Many times in the last week I've thought of a clever riff I could spin into a blog entry - but then I didn't exactly have time, time passed by, and I forgot the whole thing.
So today it's just me - nothing clever.
I slept just about 12 hours last night. That doesn't happen too often, although I sleep a lot more than the average grad student. One of the great things about grad school is that I can sleep more than I used to when I was working. 6.5 to 7 hours used to be the norm; now I can reliably get 8, and sometimes even 9.
It makes me feel better and I think happier. Less edgy, anyway. Or maybe that's the whole grad school thing.
Anyway. One more week of the class I teach: little prep required since we are doing stuff we should have finished last week, plus I have a guest speaker. Two more weeks of the other classes. Then prelims. Then summer job. Then summer trip. It all just keeps rolling along....
...on the wheel of life. (The faster I go, the faster the wheel goes, and then the faster I have to go to keep up.)
Actually, I'm not having that end-of-semester crunch that usually happens around now; it's just the usual busyness. On Monday we de-cattified the house and thoroughly cleaned the kitchen so we could spray it for ants. If you are an ant-lover, I don't want to hear about it.
Tuesday, the usual Polish crunch. Wednesday, the usual teaching-class panic, with a side of federal taxes. Thursday, more teaching-class panic, with sides of state taxes (Bonus! Two states!) and a friend's lecture.
Today I can go back to panicking about prelims and reading lists.
Last Sunday, we visited our friend C during his cancer treatment. What they were giving him was so massively serious that they kept him in ICU for the 5 days of treatment, fully hooked up to monitors of all kinds.
This is probably my last semester of taking classes (unless I really screw up prelims). I thought I would be wistful about that, but actually I can't wait. I mock undergrads for being so anxious to get out of college and - what, work 40+ hours a week for the rest of their lives?! - but I feel ready to move onto the next step in my academic life too. There will always be another great course or another great set of readings - at some point you just have to let it go.
Ok. Back to organizing tax files.
Well, little Gidget has gone home. I think there was a through-the-window altercation in our absence today: my desk (in front of the big picture window) was very disturbed, and when we got home the downstairs cat was on the porch outside the window, all suspicious about what was going on in here.
I miss Gidget already. I left the back door ajar in case our other little friends want to visit.
I am so lame that I couldn't even remember the name of my new blog.
Well, the week is over. It was sort of a vacation week, all the colleagues being in Denver for the annual conference. I got out of a meeting and a lecture today, and a class yesterday, and that was about it.
I wrote a paper today and then I watched the rebroadcast of the Pope's funeral. And cried for him and all of us.
Big changes to afoot: my parents are selling their house and moving to a retirement village; B. and I are talking about selling our house; and my brother has some commercial property under agreement for his business. Real estate is sort of exciting, in the same way that coffee is - but then I think, that property has been in my family for 60 years: isn't it kind of sad to know we will never go there again?
That's a ways away though. My mom apparently is all "I can clean this all out in 6 months" but she is just wrong. Wrong, I tell you! Dibs on the chenille bedspreads!
Somewhat by default, we saw two movies this weekend. On Friday, we saw _Goodbye Lenin_ for my history class. It's a charming film about the transition from communism to capitalism in E Germany, a gentle story about caring for family amidst retrospective ideas of communism right after the fact. (Wright Morris: "anything processed by memory [however recent] is fiction.")
I may see it again this week with my neighbor, who is trying to brush up on her German language skills.
Last night, we saw _Europa, Europa_, which pits self-identity against staying alive during the sweep of Nazis through Europe. B. was bothered by the convenient coincidences that kept Jozef alive, but it's still an incredible story that deals with the very embodiment of identity. Since I usually think of identity as an intellectual abstraction, this was a good reminder that sometimes it's a lot more basic. (A good parallel might be _The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man_ by James Wheldon Johnson.)
I am seriously thinking of taking the advice of some of my readers and starting a new blog for prelims/dissertation. See March 28 entry for the background to that...and stay tuned!
We have a new kitty/houseguest. Her name is Artemis, or Gidget, and she is all black with a white breast and white feet. She has all four sets of claws, unlike the declawed beasties downstairs.
She seems very sweet so far, but she is quite timid. She will be here for a week, so we hope she will be more relaxed and comfortable with us as the days progress.
I was supposed to go to a party tonight, but I've been glued to the news, thinking about the Pope.
I remember exactly where I was in 1978 when his predecessor died: in calculus class as a freshman, in the Bronfman Science Center.
And I don't know exactly why I am so sad: to be called to God must be a reward for the faithful, and the Pope has worked so hard and so long for the faith and the faithful that he deserves the rest of life eternal. I think those of us who mourn are mourning not for him but for our loss. When someone has lived long and done well, we mourn not his opportunities cut short (as is often the case when a young person dies) but rather the emptiness in our lives without him.
The news media is just disgusting - speculating on the funeral, the selection process, the result. I couldn't watch it anymore, so I'll have to get my updates from the Internet.